Why is everything in this game so cruddy?

[Basarab Laiota]

All of my weapons and abilities suck! I got Aloy to level 17 and have been playing for 12 hours, is it wrong of me to be expecting some kind of boost to my power by now?
Take arrows for instance... Cultist enemies who are 5 levels lower than me will do OVER ONE HUNDRED DAMAGE to me with one single arrow! My arrows on the other hand only do 70 damage WHEN HEADSHOTTING THEM! It's not even enough to kill cultists in one attack!
Besides the bow I have a ropecaster, a tripcaster and a Carja sling, which all only serve to apply status effects onto my enemies. How about something that does damage??
The abilities are all lackluster so far. The Concentration ability for instance barely gives me enough time to fire off two arrows. Critical Hit seems to be the best skill I've acquired so far, and it's very situational.
The only reliable way I have found to kill enemies is to stealth attack them, but even with Strong Strike and Strong Strike+ it still takes multiple stealth attacks to kill one larger enemy.
If there are multiple strong machines in one pack of enemies, it can take me over 20 minutes to deal with all of them. The fight when confronting Olin where you need to kill two Corruptors especially sucked, I lost sleep over how frustrating that fight was.
One thing that really sticks out to me is the difference between gameplay and cutscenes. One cutscene which showed off a Sawtooth machine sneaking up on Aloy was especially strange because Aloy claimed to have been able to deal with that Sawtooth in "half of a heartbeat".
IN WHAT UNIVERSE??? Fighting one Sawtooth is an extremely long process where I need to stealth attack it, then hide, then stealth attack it, then hide, over and over again. It's not a fun gameplay loop!
I am playing on Very Hard difficulty so if that's not the intended way to play on your first playthrough then I guess this is all my own fault, but it's still incredibly frustrating.

[Specific Beef]

I don't know what you're doing wrong. Sharpshooter bows will easily headshot humans, even above your level.

For robots, you have to look them up in the Notebook. They will barely take damage at all unless you use the right kind of ammo against them, so you have to figure out which body parts need what damage type(s). Some will reward accuracy, like if you get a precise shot on a blast container with a fire arrow, for example: it'll take a few seconds to ignite, and when it does the explosion is so big that it takes out creatures around it too.

Modifiers mounted on the armour and weapons will help too. Since you can swap armour by going to the menu mid-fight, you can have different armour types entirely dedicated towards one elemental damage type (so you swap to your electrical protection versus hawks, or you fire protection versus bellowbacks).

Sawtooths are easy to kill. The tutorial mission takes a couple of electrical tripwires and spear attacks when they go down. You could use traps of other kinds too. Don't stealth attack these big creatures [eta: unless you have knocked them down, ofc].

No fights should ever take 20 minutes. The biggest bosses go down faster than that.

[LeftPaw]

Originally posted by narutoshippudenfan203 goblin:

Yeah. Okay. I gave up. I turned it down to "Story" difficulty. It is much more fun now lol :caster_happy: I can actually kill enemies in one hit with headshots now thank the lord

I always chose story with games of this type. They start of nicely balanced but then get ridiculously hard, probably to try and slow your progression down while making the game suck.

[LunarFortune]

Originally posted by narutoshippudenfan203 goblin:

Yeah. Okay. I gave up. I turned it down to "Story" difficulty. It is much more fun now lol :caster_happy: I can actually kill enemies in one hit with headshots now thank the lord

what a noob

[Stellar Remnant]

OP plays on Very Hard and is surprised and confused that it is Very Hard.

Not sure if sarcasm or stupidity.

[Specific Beef]

Originally posted by narutoshippudenfan203 goblin:

I am 11 levels higher than these bandits and I only do 70 damage to them with headshots. I don't mean to be rude but what difficulty are you playing on? :crashqmark:

Playing on Normal (give me a break, I'm in my mid 40s and it's my first run!), but tbh from what I'm seeing I could have gone for a harder difficulty. With a sharpshooter bow and definite headshots, I took out a Level 25 Bandit Camp when I was about Level 15 at the time almost entirely from a distance with Sharpshooter (not sure about the exact level, but it was somewhere around this mark). I'm starting to think enemies don't necessarily have levels either, at least not human ones. Some robots get noticeably harder when you get fully outside the Noras' zones, but I've never once seen a human take a definite headshot and survive.

I was aware of the body-part weaknesses but had no idea that different parts were more susceptible to different ammo types, thanks for the heads-up. :dslike:

No problem :) Also, be aware that some bows that fire normal arrows can deliver quite a lot of, say, Tear power, even if it's not as dramatic-looking as a proper Tearburst arrow. Ravagers can be really troublesome at first because they're big, they're in packs, and they tend to hang out with other dangerous robots, but if you use Tear and knock off the cannon on their backs you can pick it up and wipe out everything around you.

Because Ravagers are susceptible to Tear all over, you can sometimes kill them in 3 or 4 shots by picking off the back features and landing a Tearburst under their bellies as they charge you. That last shot is usually the killshot if you get it right.

My problem is that it never gets any easier than it was in the tutorial. Is it really unreasonable of me to expect a boost to my power by now? I'm a higher level than I was in the tutorial, but the Sawtooths still take the same amount of effort to kill. :YuNanba:

Fire, then. Once you have decent weapons and mods, just flood them with fire arrows and they die.

[eta]Are you doing the Tutorial missions from the Quest list? I expect a lot of people ignore those, but they're a source of easy XP and they will sometimes teach you a really fast way to kill certain enemy types.

Also, if you find you're getting crushed by charging enemies, unlock the long dodge when you can.

[Eternal]

I am playing on hardest difficulty and anything non stealth is too difficult. I just fought 3 belowbacks and it must have taken me some 150-200 arrows.
I still like it though, I hope as I get better I get to kill them in just a few hits.

[Citizen of Nowhere]

This is my first playthrough and I play on very hard. Doesn't feel it too hard. I haven't upgraded to long rolling yet normal roll in this game already too OP. You can keep drawing weapons because no stamina or fatigue and still be able to roll with pretty long iFrame. Jump and slide also slow time to aim, like unlimited Dead Eye from RDR2.

[skauber]

I played it on Normal, I hate bullet (arrow) sponges. It gets old quickly to have to spend hundreds of arrows on one single robot. I found Normal to be OK, but maybe a little too easy. I think they should balance some of the robots better, like the Deathbringer which is touted as a big and scary robot was just "meh", while the Stormbirds were way harder to take down, unless you just rope them down and override.. Not sure which one I would say was the hardest, but the Glinthawks and Stormbirds seemed to be trickier until I started roping them down. The Frozen Wilds beasts were perhaps harder, like the Fireclaw

[pega3]

A lot has already been pointed out, however, what I haven't seen by the OP is mentioning which mods he is using. Choosing the right mods with your weapons can make quite a difference as well.
The "Shadow" class weapons offer 3 mod slots (since it's a first playthrough) and a higher base damage. If you already get them offered, but can't afford them - do some "farming".

[Rehwyn]

Originally posted by pega3:

A lot has already been pointed out, however, what I haven't seen by the OP is mentioning which mods he is using. Choosing the right mods with your weapons can make quite a difference as well.
The "Shadow" class weapons offer 3 mod slots (since it's a first playthrough) and a higher base damage. If you already get them offered, but can't afford them - do some "farming".

Minor correction, but the Shadow weapons do not have increased base damage compared to the "Basic" and "Carja" versions (ie. the base stats are the same for all of them). However, access to additional ammo types and mod slots definitely makes them worth it. The Banuk weapons do, however, have different base stats due to the overdraw mechanic.

I'm on my first playthrough, about 50h in on Normal. Level 37 with mostly Shadow weapons. Normal difficulty felt pretty good early on. It feels a bit easy now, but that's probably because I'm way over-leveled for the quests I'm doing (they're level 12-20 mostly...). I'll probably increase the difficulty a bit to compensate.

That said, a lot of the perceived power increase is likely due to an increased understanding of each robot's vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. For example, if I just shoot one of the big robots in the body with normal arrows, it easily takes 10x longer (or more) to kill than if I freeze them (which greatly increases damage taken) and target a weak-point with a triple-shot (as an example).

That said, one thing I like about the game is that even weak robots can be a threat if I slack off and don't pay attention.

[Gate Keeper]

IDK man, I'm fresh start on ultra hard with all hud elements off, and humans are absolutely no threat to me. I have the green sharpshooter bow and I 1-shot every one of them (with headshots). Takes 2 shots in the body.

Even the boss enemy in the very early game, IDK how to spoiler tag, so I won't say. Even he died in like 1 headshot and 4 body shots.

My real issues is having to face two sawtooths at early levels when I'm counting all my wires and metal vases.