Mission difficulty all over the place

[[XIII] Lucius Vinicius]

Some missions are a cakewalk even with the B-Team.
But others are such a royal pain that even having one member of your A-Team (of course you gotta bring that, not a single replacement character allowed) not being in absolute shining peak condition will have you fail it no matter the amount of savescumming. Notably the mission to recruit Sir Lucan is brutal: 4 large enemy groups (undead, so tey'll also get back up unless you focus them, which you can ill afford) including 2-3 meaty bosses with mean mechanics (the group of Sir Rodric stands out, as his minions are the most numerable and they tend to swarm you quickly, but if you kill them his damage explodes by +50% for each 3 killed).

[Hecabutter]

I think taking vitality damage/ injury is just a down spiral, it means less money, less exp due to training ground delay and then you need to use worse comp that is more likely to take damage and injury and so on. Very hard is so unforgiving that I bricked my save at level 4. Then I tried to complete every mission perfectly, so far in to week 35 it's still doable.

[Hecabutter]

Originally posted by EternityDre:

Yep. I'm going to restart, focus on taking less vit damage and injuries, focus on getting training ground asap, and see how it goes. Now that I know what is coming in act 2, i'm going to try and focus skills more towards aoe/armor penetration. any other tips from your second attempt that helped you proceed into act 2?

On second thought, training ground might not be that important. Because I mostly use Mordred, Dindraine, Ector, Balin (Kay in early game). Merchant upgrades are more valuable.

And aoe is not that important til act3, just focus on Balin gear to make sure his backstab can oneshot 60hp enemy. Use slow, fire arrow, shield charge, lightning bolt to cc enemies, position wisely and use Mordred with aoo reduction to save Ector and Dindraine from melee enemies.

[Tomaraen Ironheart]

The mission with Morgan is just undoable for me on Hard. Up to this point I have managed to win every mission with the right decisions and with little to no damage to my heroes, but this mission is crazy even on Story difficulty.
Such an awesome game but it needs a big patch to fix soo many things, such as audio and difficulty.

[Magic Bang]

played on hard and rougelite 90 hours, lost all my favorite heroes. 10/10

[Triumph]

Yeah, the lvl 14 mission “The return of Morgana Le Fay” is kicking my ass. There where hard missions before this but I was always able to find a way to get through them. This mission, after several attempts, Seems unbeatable. I can’t get through the first fight without losing someone. It’s way harder then anything else up to this point. I’ve tried several different group compositions. I feel like I’d have to respec 2 to 3 of my characters just to have a chance, and even then I don’t know if I could do it.

[Ace490]

I wouldn't do it. You need to be 2 lvl above the suggested difficulty to have everyone survive the first fight. Even if you bring 2 overpowered backstabbers I think it is not doable at the suggested lvl.

[Roughshod]

Originally posted by Hecabutter:

I think taking vitality damage/ injury is just a down spiral, it means less money, less exp due to training ground delay and then you need to use worse comp that is more likely to take damage and injury and so on. Very hard is so unforgiving that I bricked my save at level 4. Then I tried to complete every mission perfectly, so far in to week 35 it's still doable.

This is exactly how the game seems to be intended to me. It's the gist of my thread a few days ago: Healing and injuries - am I missing something?
It seems like most people are saying the same thing, this game is out of balance. Either you play perfectly, then reload on a single bad encounter/mission. Lots of people scrap their playthroughs, multiple times.

The difference is some people like this, and some don't. Personally I like the tactics of the game, I can see the fun in it. But the rest, the healing, lack of options, etc isn't fun.

[[XIII] Lucius Vinicius]

Found a Side mission that is absolutely impossible: in "The Huntmaster", the side mission is to save ther merchant's brother. Problem is, the ranged enemy focuses down the NPCs (as they are the easier targets) and kills 1-2 each turn, depending on which direction they run in like headless chicken. So turn 2 maybe 1 NPC is still alive, and it's not the quest objective guy.
What confuses this a bit is that the quest remains marked as unfulfilled, the dude looks pretty dead, but after ending the mission I got a letter with 1000 gold for saving him.

[Dyer1981]

Originally posted by Roughshod:

Originally posted by Hecabutter:

I think taking vitality damage/ injury is just a down spiral, it means less money, less exp due to training ground delay and then you need to use worse comp that is more likely to take damage and injury and so on. Very hard is so unforgiving that I bricked my save at level 4. Then I tried to complete every mission perfectly, so far in to week 35 it's still doable.

This is exactly how the game seems to be intended to me. It's the gist of my thread a few days ago: Healing and injuries - am I missing something?
It seems like most people are saying the same thing, this game is out of balance. Either you play perfectly, then reload on a single bad encounter/mission. Lots of people scrap their playthroughs, multiple times.

The difference is some people like this, and some don't. Personally I like the tactics of the game, I can see the fun in it. But the rest, the healing, lack of options, etc isn't fun.

People are just bad at the game. I am not saying there aren't balance changes needed, there are and some encounters are over-tuned. However, if you play smart and utilize your abilities and think about positioning... you should be fine until A3 at least.

[Yodums]

Originally posted by XIII Lucius Vinicius:

Found a Side mission that is absolutely impossible: in "The Huntmaster", the side mission is to save ther merchant's brother. Problem is, the ranged enemy focuses down the NPCs (as they are the easier targets) and kills 1-2 each turn, depending on which direction they run in like headless chicken. So turn 2 maybe 1 NPC is still alive, and it's not the quest objective guy.
What confuses this a bit is that the quest remains marked as unfulfilled, the dude looks pretty dead, but after ending the mission I got a letter with 1000 gold for saving him.

Difficulty will vary depending on team loadout. Some teams with access to high amounts of cc + damage trivialize NPC protection side missions. For that one, which I did couple days ago on hard difficulty, I just ran my usual cc God Merlin while the rest of my team wrecked the enemies not cc'ed.

[ec0nomist]

Originally posted by WhySoSeriousBroo?:

Originally posted by proba 1 2 3:

Are there other maps as well beside Sir Lucan's mission? A few players reported Morgan Le Fay's mission to be extraordinarily hard and we will go through the reported maps to find a delicate balance.

Also, can you tell me on which difficulty level are you playing?

Very hard difficulty and I feel like Sir Lucan's mission is just off the rails, I managed to complete everything else up to that point (the White Knight mission is completely fine too I think). I am playing it so far on my level and it is impossible to beat with how strong the leaders are and the buffs that they give in addition to that. It pains me that I have to skip that one until I lvl up my heroes because otherwise its too hard to keep up with how little Sir Lucan is of help for that mission (His fire skill seems extremely weak on that difficulty at least and even in general he isn't that helpful except for tanking a bit)

Exactly the same experience here. Played on hard up till this fight. I only have 3 heroes at level 10, Mordred, Ector and Merlin, Ector is badly damanged, no vitality and 2 injuries, so he is out. the rest of my heroes are level 8. The white knight mission was doable but Sir lucan was way way worse. I think it might still be fine IF there were more sidemissions to level up the characters. There isnt enough AOE without Ectors fireblast, Merlins dragon has longer cooldown and even hitting 5 mobs with it, waiting 5 rounds again for another shot is not enough when it comes to the swarms of op mobs + super elite terminators pounding 1 heroe to death in 1-2 rounds if its not the tank, then it takes 3 maybe 4.

[Slightly Dead]

Act 3 seems to be unbalanced due to massive difficulty I just tried one mission in a cave filled with picts and they just destroy my party seemingly able to wound my party even though they have armour on which arrows seem to suddenly ignore so I end up with a wounded main character that I need for the next mission along with mother members which will take 2 to 3 missions to heal up and as other people have said if you don't have any side quests or the other character are too low it make it unplayable.

[Velamont]

Originally posted by Slightly Dead:

Act 3 seems to be unbalanced due to massive difficulty I just tried one mission in a cave filled with picts and they just destroy my party seemingly able to wound my party even though they have armour on which arrows seem to suddenly ignore so I end up with a wounded main character that I need for the next mission along with mother members which will take 2 to 3 missions to heal up and as other people have said if you don't have any side quests or the other character are too low it make it unplayable.

Lol this is an easy side mission for a B team.

[Nemesid]

1) first run Ironman is just bad idea. I dont know why people do that. You dont know the game, you dont know difficulty, you dont know builds.
2) Hard is very ok. Yes, there are some huge spikes but mostly it was my lack of knowledge or tactics.
3) Morgana mission on hard is no go on that level. HP of villagers is insane. On my first run. On my second run in that stage I have team that can wipe anything.
4) On my second run I did build all knights correctly and I breeze through hard every act. Treefolk diff spike? Didnt notice. Since Act3 I can wipe most enemies on round 1.

I think difficulty is ok. Just ironman hard+ really isnt for first play.

[Avallach]

Originally posted by Ace490:

I wouldn't do it. You need to be 2 lvl above the suggested difficulty to have everyone survive the first fight. Even if you bring 2 overpowered backstabbers I think it is not doable at the suggested lvl.

Not at all!

I'm playing on Hard Ironman, still on my first playthrough, I knew nothing about the game before release and didn't know anything about the mission going in.

I went in a level below it, because I thought it would be cool to recruit a higher level character, and Morgana at that.

I was definitely taken aback by the first encounter, and sat there puzzling through it for a while - playing on Ironman (roguelike, whatever) I've had to do a bit of that.

I had Kay, Balin, Isolde and Morgawse. First turn I had Balin go after a caster at the back, range CC'd 2 others (can't recall if they had partial resists, but it stopped them doing much), and stayed out of melee range. I got hit with an AOE or two, but nothing too bad. Next turn I had Isolde and Morgawse CC a couple of the melee guys that got close, took out another caster with Balin and started going to work with Kay.

After that it gets hazy, it was still a little tense, I had to take it slowly and make every move count, but I got through it without any huge armour / hp loss.

To state it again, I went in a level lower, and without knowing any more about the game than I'd learnt in my current playthrough, and I came through relatively unscathed. Maybe I just got lucky, but it's definitely doable.