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).

[Avallach]

FroBodine a écrit :

What do you mean by "a little bit of CC can help with the rest", please? Close Combat? That's like 90% of the battles. Or am I missing something?

Sorry, yeah, that's more of a roleplaying game term.

As someone mentioned, crowd control. Specifically things that prevent the enemy from acting, or slow them down. Lightning spells, frost spells, knockdowns etc can all reduce the target's action points.

You can use that, combined with positioning, to manage which of the enemies (if any) will get a chance to attack you in their turn. If you can get a few kills without taking much damage in the first few turns, you'll generally be set up pretty well from there.

[Avallach]

GoMeZ-T.T ™©® a écrit :

TormDK a écrit :

To the point; The ability to skip a day so that it counts as a mission would also allow for better injury/vitality handling, as I'm basically stuck currently on the level 14 missions as either the team I have left that isn't injured or have low vitality to the point where they die and I can't complete the mission anyhow.

dude the game should be hard, not an easy faceroll, just cause you cant manage the game. I finished the game on hard first playthrough. I had some struggles too on some fights, but I just reloaded older saves, made something different, and then won the fights. THIS MAKES THE CHALLENGE.

To be fair, reloading whenever a mission doesn't go perfectly isn't a great mechanic. He's actually trying to play the game properly by not doing that, whereas you're circumventing a significant part of the strategic layer of the game.

I don't think skipping days is the answer, since unlike Xcom time isn't a resource. You could just keep skipping so that everyone is always healed, which makes the whole injury/vitality system pointless.

It does need some sort of catch-up mechanic though, so that if you have a couple of bad missions in a row you're not left at a complete dead end.

[[XIII] Lucius Vinicius]

Okay, BOTH missions involving the Red Knight suck. In the first (aside from being hard) even on bloody Story (had to turn it down to even have a chance) there is a sidemission and in the second even the MAIN MISSION where you have to protect NPCs. The AI knows that and targets the NPCs. And since they stand between you and the enemy, there is no chance in hell to save them before they get moshpitted to death and beyond in the first, and in the second it is possible but not without overextending beyond what may be considered reasonable.
This needs to be fixed. Sidemission fail due to AI behaviour is annoying, but being absolutely unable to complete the main quest of the mission is inacceptable.
And on top of that the encounters are WAY overtuned. Still on Story, 14 enemies with 200+ HP and 5+ armor is a ton of chunk to get through, and that would be if they just threw spitballs. Which they are not. Act 4 (I think it is that) must've been designed by someone who has lost touch with the ground or else hates players.

[HelsDottir]

A few extra optional missions in each chapter would go a long way in resolving most of the issues and give the player more options. You could over level your A team, get more knights to max level so you B team didn't suck quite as much, or even skip a particularly problematic mission and still be levelled enough to take on the story missions.

[[XIII] Lucius Vinicius]

Keep trying and failing Blackened heart. This is the first mission ever in which even Mordred biffs it, and I am playing on Story now. Call me weak, pathetic, whatever, I don't care. But making a mission in which the probably tankiest of all characters dies in round 3 of an encounter on the easiest difficulty while using consumables and all available options may be called "overdone".

[Terrapin]

GoMeZ-T.T ™©® a écrit :

TormDK a écrit :

To the point; The ability to skip a day so that it counts as a mission would also allow for better injury/vitality handling, as I'm basically stuck currently on the level 14 missions as either the team I have left that isn't injured or have low vitality to the point where they die and I can't complete the mission anyhow.

dude the game should be hard, not an easy faceroll, just cause you cant manage the game. I finished the game on hard first playthrough. I had some struggles too on some fights, but I just reloaded older saves, made something different, and then won the fights. THIS MAKES THE CHALLENGE. anything smooth feels completely boring in this game. it should be as it is. l2p and get better. prepare fights, do something different. learn to grow. the game was challenging but fine on hard. I liked it. later it got very easy even on hard with perfect matchup. don't need it that way.

Lol, dude you admit to save scumming and then tell someone else to l2p.

[holy-death]

I recall a few missions I got severly damaged on:

- White Knight's mission (recruitment).
- Percivale's mission (recruitment).
- The Excalibur mission.

This was on Hard difficulty. I barely managed to complete the White Knight's mission with everyone alive.

The big issue was not being able to control the White Knight himself as he was throwing himself against the enemies, which made keeping him alive much more difficult and came at expense of other characters.

This is the only mission so far in which I was unable to complete all side missions (I think I had to give up on saving one brother).

Pervivale's mission was similarly difficult to White Knight's (everyone was almost dead and with multiple injuries), but this may be because I split my team on last two fights, which made dealing with the waves more difficult than it could've been.

The Excalibur I got two highly damaged and injuries characters, but it wasn't as bad as the previous two missions mentioned.

By the way, I am playing on Ironman.

Edit:

If I may suggest something - adding a campfire or two would help a lot in terms of making these missions more sustainable without making significant changes to enemies.

Failing that, the number of enemies is really high per encounter and these missions have quite a few encounters (read: the levels are pretty large), as a result the damage sustained over time starts adding up and you can't really recover well enough with so few campfires.

[trekdoyle]

One of the fights in the RK mission was unusually challenging. I beat it but then, for other reasons, had to come back to it. Don't know what others have experienced but RK mission was super glitchy for me. Out of sight lag on different encounters to the point it was unplayable. I beat RK and was going to do the optional, more difficult encounter, and then it hit me with the lag again, and since I had the option to just hit finish, I did. But it was super laggy on at least three different encounters and I have not seen that on any other mission. Glad its done at this point and moving on! Love the game generally.

[PotatoLord]

The red knight missions are also really big spike in difficulty, sometimes some of the encounter is really stupid as my whole group just walk in surrounded by enemies and talk with them then when the fight started i'm already surrounded, and i have to save scum to avoid having one of my marksman or arcanist just get instant gibbed by 4 mobs. Their health also really jumped really high for no reason compared to the mainline story mission. and i realise once you reach around end of act 3 start of act 4, your B team really can't keep up with training as the level of the mission just gets higher and higher and you really have to keep using your a-team to go complete them unless you are pumping gold training like hell but you can't keep up with the gold spend since new gear also get expensive

[GeneralGonzo]

PotatoLord a écrit :

The red knight missions are also really big spike in difficulty, sometimes some of the encounter is really stupid as my whole group just walk in surrounded by enemies and talk with them then when the fight started i'm already surrounded, and i have to save scum to avoid having one of my marksman or arcanist just get instant gibbed by 4 mobs. Their health also really jumped really high for no reason compared to the mainline story mission. and i realise once you reach around end of act 3 start of act 4, your B team really can't keep up with training as the level of the mission just gets higher and higher and you really have to keep using your a-team to go complete them unless you are pumping gold training like hell but you can't keep up with the gold spend since new gear also get expensive

Yeah, but that makes the game interesting, since you have a big management part, in what you invest your ressources.
For example, going to build up your roound-table let´s you collect 3k gold for 500 resources once everxy 5 missions. Good deal, or ?

[[XIII] Lucius Vinicius]

GeneralGonzo a écrit :

PotatoLord a écrit :

The red knight missions are also really big spike in difficulty, sometimes some of the encounter is really stupid as my whole group just walk in surrounded by enemies and talk with them then when the fight started i'm already surrounded, and i have to save scum to avoid having one of my marksman or arcanist just get instant gibbed by 4 mobs. Their health also really jumped really high for no reason compared to the mainline story mission. and i realise once you reach around end of act 3 start of act 4, your B team really can't keep up with training as the level of the mission just gets higher and higher and you really have to keep using your a-team to go complete them unless you are pumping gold training like hell but you can't keep up with the gold spend since new gear also get expensive

Yeah, but that makes the game interesting, since you have a big management part, in what you invest your ressources.
For example, going to build up your roound-table let´s you collect 3k gold for 500 resources once everxy 5 missions. Good deal, or ?

Not if those resources are still required for upgrades, no. Also, the game isn't INTERESTING in rhe Red Knight missions, it's INFURIATING. I am considering to uninstall and forget the game right now.

[Austero]

TormDK a écrit :

To the point; The ability to skip a day so that it counts as a mission would also allow for better injury/vitality handling, as I'm basically stuck currently on the level 14 missions as either the team I have left that isn't injured or have low vitality to the point where they die and I can't complete the mission anyhow.

This. I have basically nobody that is the right level who is uninjured. Heck Mordred has been injured for several missions and I can't easily bench him because of this.

[Kazanski]

You can play this game with a variety of different compositions and beat any mission in the game without taking casualties. The "hard" difficulty mode can be hard. There are spikes in difficulty levels, especially between the acts. A new act introduces new enemy types and your team hasn't moved fully into the next gear category. You also are not used to the new enemies yet which tends to make your initial impulses less precise.

They just balanced the Morgana mission which makes sense, I underestimated the damage of the enemies on that mission and almost lost a sage. Once I adjusted my play style mid-mission, I was able to beat that mission without any problems. . . and I was playing on Hardcore for my first play through.

This is not really a "get good" post - everybody is in a different place with how they approach RPGs . . . but if you find that you are struggling, like every player, you have to "solve" for why you are losing. The most seasoned players and newest players all go through this process in one fashion or another.

In a campaign style game, enough mistakes will kill a run. Getting a knight injured is a mistake. You can blame the difficulty level of the game and feel that it is not right for you and that is ok - but I am grateful for the difficulty level because it made solving for the puzzle more challenging and more rewarding.

[Emirus]

Kainsec a écrit :

I can agree there is a massive difficulty spike in normal difficulty around level 14, Before then I never had to rest any hero because it was easy, stack armor on mordred, shield rush and purposely overextend him so everyone would focus him, clean up with other knights. Then the Unseelie came along, all their archers draining your ap, knocking you out of position, the amount of damage all their units do shreds though anyone not in heavy armor. Even taking Gawain, giving him the most armor I can, sitting him next to isolde who I have a relic armor that grants extra armor that is unbreakable armor to nearby allies, and his taunt he still gets shredded because of the sheer number of enemies.

This is also the part of the game when the sheer number of enemies each fight gets out of hand, Fights go from being slightly outnumbered each encounter to usually 2 to 3x as many enemies as you each encounter, with their massively upped damage and utility this spirals into what I call an injury cycle. Where you your knights get out of the hospice and cathedral just in time to immediately go back assuming you are paying gold to rush them because without that you wont have enough knights to go on. I have taken to stripping the gear off the healing to give to the current group because they have to have the best gear I have just to do anything. Without tristan and boduicea backstabbing ppl for 50 damage every mission at this point would probably be a massacre.

Then there is lancelot and Lady le Fey recruitment missions which are just insane, lancelots first encounter in particular, start far away from enemy with several units that can pull your units out of position and rip them to shreds, pelted by archers who can stun you, then after 2 turns another group with the fog guys who become invulnerable and when they die freeze everyone near them pop up with even more archers. I am just saying Lancelot and Lady Le Fey better be amazing and have several unique skills to make them worth this difficulty

Agree 100%. I'm stuck on Lancelot mission. Normal after 14 gets crazy. was so easy before.

[issssk]

I keep losing battles on storymode...seriously.
Currently on 2nd attempt on Black Heart, 2nd battle.

Edit : 3rd attempt. That son of the red knight goes down in two rounds before I can even reach him. Screw this nonsense.