Through the ashes - your thoughts?

[Sichimus]

I am curious as to your individual experiences on through the ashes and what difficulty level you chose

On core I found it literally impossible with the base party they give you, and essentially unwinnable unless you make certain characters (Rowdy Rogue so that you can actually deal damage, human Grenadier alchemist with every single feat for extra bombs for the unending horde of swarms you face at level 1/2, which you dont have enough flasks to deal with otherwise, and your choice of a healer with an aoe channel. Even after restarting a couple of times to find a composition that even had a chance of dealing with the encounters, I still found it an absolutely miserable slog where I still had to reload saves frequently despite pre-buffing and normally having an AC that enemies only hit on a 20. The storybook sequences had good moments, but I found myself overall frustrated at how nonsensical they seemed (For some reason, sending the BLIND dwarf lady on scouting missions is frequently the best option).

Part of my frustrations may be due to the fact that I enjoy becoming immersed and not reloading saves frequently, and just living with the consequences, but if you don't reload at every single bad decision, poison, or disease, there is a very good chance you will end up being sent into an unrecoverable death spiral, and maybe you don't even realize it until hours later.

[mbradtke]

your fault is that you play it on core but it is prolly designed for normal,
would you play the main campaign on core? with no gear? weak group? -attack weapons?!
no you woudnt.... play it on normal

[Schlumpsha]

I mean, it's a survival horror. Your commoner party, weak and traumatized as they are, is really meant to avoid combat at all cost. One wrong move leads to death. That is how the DLC is designed to be played.

[Immortal Reaver]

On Core it was managable. I created MW MC, Grenadier, Erastil Cleric and Slayer Archer.
As long as I avoided fights as much as possible it was ok.
I did all of Theathre basicaly only with Reikard, his SA one or twoshots the dog and you can make it so you aggro only 1 at the time. You can sneak around the swarms.
In caves I used fire oil on centipedes, dropped the stone on lizard, otherwise nothing much special. Just stealth and always get the first hit in with SA.
In first part of graveyard I fought only 3 times againts skelies on high, skelies blocking the path, then I aggroed the zombies to fight the big jelly, then the ghouls in front of church.
In second part of graveyard that not fighting starts to become harder, I scouted out area and enemy movement, but you need to fight at least 4 times, after boss fight I got to lvl 3 and that is when I could fight everything so I got item to heal gravekeeper as when you heal him you can rest without consequence, and after that I cleared graveyard, after that I just scouted the area to decide best position and what spell to use and then combat everything, unless it had something to drop on enemies then I used that. I sacrificed blind dwarf to skip boss fight at the end.

"For some reason, sending the BLIND dwarf lady on scouting missions is frequently the best option."
Well blind lady does not need to see in dark sewers so she does not alert monsters with light, also she has basicaly map of the area in her head, that helps. But after graveyard she is not best at scounting.

[Vox]

Originally posted by mbradtke:

your fault is that you play it on core but it is prolly designed for normal,
would you play the main campaign on core? with no gear? weak group? -attack weapons?!
no you woudnt.... play it on normal

Could you be more helpful or constructive with any of your comments on this board instead of always telling everyone it's their fault for doing x or not doing y?

I haven't beat it yet, myself. I'm having a hard time getting into it at all, honestly. I understand what they were trying to do, but it's just not appealing to me at all. I'll probably just toybox my way through it so as to have a party with some history at least for the new DLC.

[Deo]

Oh look, higher difficulty requires proper character building. What's new...

[mbradtke]

Originally posted by Vox:

Originally posted by mbradtke:

your fault is that you play it on core but it is prolly designed for normal,
would you play the main campaign on core? with no gear? weak group? -attack weapons?!
no you woudnt.... play it on normal

Could you be more helpful or constructive with any of your comments on this board instead of always telling everyone it's their fault for doing x or not doing y?

I haven't beat it yet, myself. I'm having a hard time getting into it at all, honestly. I understand what they were trying to do, but it's just not appealing to me at all. I'll probably just toybox my way through it so as to have a party with some history at least for the new DLC.

I am helpful if i can help, you can play it on core but normal is more than enough, stuff can even easily kill you on normal in this campaign, why play it on core? you have little ressources and can easily get in problems, core will the fights you have to fight/ or try to avoid just harder, nothing else, you get a weak party in this campaign, i just think it is not made for a higher difficulty

[Weekend]

because core is Dnd rules, normal is easy mode Dnd

[smellibear]

Core is going to be more difficult so some of this is your own fault. That said, my experience with through the Ashes wasn't that bad because I made a monk. Garden variety empty hand monk. Was the campaign easy? No! I enjoyed it. I got my little rod at the end that isn't quite as bad as some say, especially first couple acts. The party isn't ideal but that's the point, you're a much more ragtag group than the actual campaign.

tl;dr If you can't handle core, tone it down,

[Sichimus]

Originally posted by Deo:

Oh look, higher difficulty requires proper character building. What's new...

Originally posted by smellibear:

Core is going to be more difficult so some of this is your own fault. That said, my experience with through the Ashes wasn't that bad because I made a monk. Garden variety empty hand monk. Was the campaign easy? No! I enjoyed it. I got my little rod at the end that isn't quite as bad as some say, especially first couple acts. The party isn't ideal but that's the point, you're a much more ragtag group than the actual campaign.

tl;dr If you can't handle core, tone it down,

I guess part of my issue is since I went into the DLC with the mindset that we were a low power party, it would feel weird to have these classes that are absolutely nutty at low levels, so I didn't initially have a rowdy rogue. It's a hilarious juxtaposition to have to have these powerhouse classes in a "weak" campaign, where my one rowdy rogue dude can literally one shot kill almost every enemy as early as level 1. I have EASILY been able to destroy the optional bosses on core as well, like death on eight legs got 3 shotted by mr. Rowdy. I guess part of my issue was just that I tried to go along with the theme of the campaign and choose more "regular" classes instead of going full cheese EZ mode with a bajillion animal companion classes

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

This DLC is pretty good, it is meant to use environment and avoid fights. So for the most part you just eliminate stuff without even fighting. To complete some quests, there're some unvoidable ones but by then you should have few levels to manage them.
I think I did that on normal with the basic party but on core it should be ok too. Rekarth is a decent rogue and Sendri a decent Bard. It's not because they're more commoners than heroes that they cannot be efficient. And by the look of it, the new DLC kind of make those commoners quite some heroes. So why not choose an archetype that can become powerful? It's not excluded and matches the overall storyline.

[adam.rosenow]

The way I managed the swarms in the Theatre was to use the environment. If you solve the lever puzzle you now have a spot to retreat to where you can launch arrows at them from a distance.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by Schlumpsha:

I mean, it's a survival horror. Your commoner party, weak and traumatized as they are, is really meant to avoid combat at all cost. One wrong move leads to death. That is how the DLC is designed to be played.

But who really wants to play like that?

Doesn't sound very fun to me.

[Green Knight]

I really, really enjoyed it. Great change of pace. My only regret was playing it on Hard, which I think was a bit too high :D

[Schlumpsha]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

But who really wants to play like that?

Doesn't sound very fun to me.

I do? Survival horror is an entertaining genre indeed. Double so because it makes the DLC thematically into the opposite of the main campaign's power fantasy.

[Nordil(Hun)]

It was atmospherical and different feel to the original campaign i enjoyed it, i used my old morninglordian(RL) cleric as base. Healer, persu occasional searing light. I think he hit with his sling or xbow or whatever only twice in the whole campaign:D

edit: played on core.