Map Progression

[Davadin]

When starting a new account (so no unlocks yet), what's the correct progression? Obviously skill levels and good vs bad essence investment matters, but I'm curious what people feel like the difficulty encourages of you, especially if you're committed to not losing but pushing yourself forward as much as possible. Do we move onto new maps, grind available ones, replay maps with the extra challenge settings enabled (the apocalypse mode, is it?). Most games have steps forward to take that are reasonable, and some you should not attempt until you have more unlocks. But this game doesn't seem to lay that out clearly.

What are veteran players' thoughts?

[sandman25dcsss]

I am not veteran, but feel like first map on apoc 6 would be easier than last 2 maps on apoc 0.

[Bumc]

If you can handle having your ass handed to you, the correct progression is up and up.

Gildenberg -> Apoc 1 Lakeburg -> Apoc 2 third map etc.

If you lose on a boss, just try again knowing what it actually does.
If you lose before boss, fall back and do some easier maps on higher apocalypse to catch up on unlocks.

[Kaysoky]

I think if you beat all the havens on Apocalypse 3 once, you'll end up with enough essence to unlock almost everything by the time you reach the last haven. (At least, that's what happened to me.) And since Apoc3 has that +60% essence gain modifier, I'm guessing you'd need to replay about half the havens once to get a similar number of unlocks on the default difficulty.

And one mistake I made was *not* to lose enough :D. If you lose 20 havens (i.e. by abandoning them), you get an extra 200 HP on the circle. For one haven (Elderlicht), that apparently lets you survive one major mistake in the boss phase.

[sandman25dcsss]

I wouldn't worry about essence. I have unlocked everything for esssence, but I still need to complete everything for weapons, it requires spending so many AP on each

[Magnus075]

Its a personal chosen journey. Many valid choices to be made.

For me, I did whole campaign of basic difficulty before goin into higher apocs.

Some start using boundless omens from start and experiment with those.

Then there's goin basic difficulty on 1st haven, apoc 1 on 2nd, apoc 2 on 3rd and so on.

[Ichthyic]

I figured the levels got harder with increasing numbers of omens available, so did them in that order. worked out fine taking the max apoc level available for each successive map.

[Ichthyic]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

I wouldn't worry about essence. I have unlocked everything for esssence, but I still need to complete everything for weapons, it requires spending so many AP on each

use the lake map. it has tons of levels, then just put the same weapon you want to level on each character. when done, switch to the next weapon and repeat. keep your trained weapons in your secondary slot if you need them. or don't, and load your secondary wep slots with the weps you are training as well.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Ichthyic:

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

I wouldn't worry about essence. I have unlocked everything for esssence, but I still need to complete everything for weapons, it requires spending so many AP on each

use the lake map. it has tons of levels, then just put the same weapon you want to level on each character. when done, switch to the next weapon and repeat. keep your trained weapons in your secondary slot if you need them. or don't, and load your secondary wep slots with the weps you are training as well.

Thank you, I disabled all unlocked melee weapons, just 7 are remaining. Same for magic/ranged, except I have less than 4 ranged/magic weapons to unlock, so some unlocked weapons are enabled too. I am not going to play Lakeburg ever, I have beaten it on apoc6 and it is the most boring map which makes melee useless vs bosses.

[Ichthyic]

great for training ranged weps though ;)

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Ichthyic:

great for training ranged weps though ;)

True, but I like blood mages and those restore HP from melee only

[RulzBoooM]

You can go ahead and do each subsequent map on the newly unlocked apocalypse setting. Imo the added difficulty from apo 1 is largely unnoticeable by itself. At apo 2 you effectively need to drain about 50% more HP compared to normal. From meta progression you get can get 2 additional AP which basically means that you do 50% more damage. Additionally, meta progression gives you a higher rate of uncommon/rare/epic items, which also makes you stronger. Apo 3 is more of a nuisance than anything else.
The first noticable difficulty bump is apo 4. This largely depends on your play style, though. If you are already letting enemies into haven tiles and setting up mountains of corpses, you probably won't have any issues with apo 4 (even less so if you are using the omen for additional loot from corpses). However, if you are trying to keep enemies outside of haven tiles, walling up and setting up perimeter defenses, apo 4 is going to significantly slow down your economy progression.
Apo 5 is another significant bump in difficulty that does not really get mitigated by meta progression. It will feel harder no matter what. You can make this easier by learning how modifiers stack well and using decent omens.
Apo 6 feels mostly inconsequential... If you are winning on apo 5, you will be winning on apo 6 as well.

[Davadin]

Originally posted by RulzBoooM:

You can go ahead and do each subsequent map on the newly unlocked apocalypse setting. Imo the added difficulty from apo 1 is largely unnoticeable by itself. At apo 2 you effectively need to drain about 50% more HP compared to normal. From meta progression you get can get 2 additional AP which basically means that you do 50% more damage. Additionally, meta progression gives you a higher rate of uncommon/rare/epic items, which also makes you stronger. Apo 3 is more of a nuisance than anything else.
The first noticable difficulty bump is apo 4. This largely depends on your play style, though. If you are already letting enemies into haven tiles and setting up mountains of corpses, you probably won't have any issues with apo 4 (even less so if you are using the omen for additional loot from corpses). However, if you are trying to keep enemies outside of haven tiles, walling up and setting up perimeter defenses, apo 4 is going to significantly slow down your economy progression.
Apo 5 is another significant bump in difficulty that does not really get mitigated by meta progression. It will feel harder no matter what. You can make this easier by learning how modifiers stack well and using decent omens.
Apo 6 feels mostly inconsequential... If you are winning on apo 5, you will be winning on apo 6 as well.

Oh! Are corpses dropped when monsters are killed within the boundaries of the haven?!?

[Davadin]

Also- thanks for the replies, guys. It's helping me triangulate thew difficulty here. Technically, I've played this game since its very first demo, but I've reset my progress with different patches and never played very far into a campaign. I don't think I've ever lost a map, so I like the idea of playing with high difficulty, but some games really require the meta progression before you scale up to the higher difficulties, and I just wasn't sure what that scaling looked like for people in this. I want to play a very difficult map, not an impossible one, if that makes sense.

[GC13]

Originally posted by Davadin:

Oh! Are corpses dropped when monsters are killed within the boundaries of the haven?!?

They drop at their highest frequency when monsters die inside the haven, second-most when they die against the wall.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by GC13:

Originally posted by Davadin:

Oh! Are corpses dropped when monsters are killed within the boundaries of the haven?!?

They drop at their highest frequency when monsters die inside the haven, second-most when they die against the wall.

Walls are not required, it is based on position only. Check Coprse Mechanic section in https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2729860442