A discussion about the difficulty of the newest content (1.0.0.4 - Dawn Office)

[Taihou]

Not only every single card of them puts Burns on you, but they also have +1 Burn stack boosts along with 70+ HP, Salvador has 2 dice with 2-6 speed, 1 cost cards with three dices 1-7 and that 3 cost with impossible defense and 5-18 damage. They also have starting Protection bonuses just because.

Not only that but their resistances are focused on piercing, meaning you won't stagger them with guns which are pretty much your only counter roll wise. In the first turn at least one of my characters will end up staggered, the overall HP of the team will be down to 50% after it, meaning next turn will start with my team having six stacks of burn and already broken...

And you only have one single attempt at this! Only one reception! What's the reason sometimes you can fight on several floors and this time only on one? If anything it would make sense to have two receptions here, this person wasn't even fond of Walter to just go in and go out the Library, he aims to get rid of Angela so he would want to hang around the Library for longer times. Even Roland knows him, they could have had some brief but interesting chat if you were to send them to fight. Answered in the clear event afterwards


So far I've lost five Walter books at this, and the best attempt ended with Salvador alive at 50HP, but that's about it, the other attemps either I didn't finish a single one of their guys, or only one. (And they either didn't drop a book or the book didn't yield their pages)
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On another note, I've only been able to attempt Porccubus... there's no real clear way to beat this abnormality, it's immune to ranged, the page it gives you always ends up rolling 1s in a 1-10 roll, and it can singlehandedly wipe one of your guys in a good rolling turn...

I legit do not get what's up with the spike in difficulty. I would love for them to reconsider some things about this latest released update.

[Arkar1234]

It's a project moon game, spikes in difficulty and changing your plans accordingly is kinda their thing.

[Taihou]

Originally posted by Arkar1234:

It's a project moon game, spikes in difficulty and changing your plans accordingly is kinda their thing.

I know PM games require such a thing, but what I imply is beyond that, I mean that even playing by their rules, there is a clear lack in balance when it comes to the newest content.

As an example, when we first got to face Gyeong-mi, it was absurdly scary what the values in their cards were, 2 cost cards having so many powerful dice. With that as comparison, Gyeong-mi's "Cut In" card is a 2 cost card with 3-6 blunt, 1-6 evade, 3-4 piercing, which is quite a capable card even though it lacks any kind of special effect...

And then you meet Yuna's... well, any of Yuna's 2 cost card, like "Eject" with a 3-7 piercing that reduces target's power die by 1, then a 2-5 that again reduces the target's power for the die by 1, and a 2-5 defense... AND THE CARD STILL DEALS BURN DAMAGE! You also have Butterfly Slash, another 2 cost, with 2-7 blunt, 3-5 defense and 4-8 slice... WHICH BURNS TOO. And their passives give you +1 Burn stack when they put stacks on you, I've seen characters get 10 burn damage at the start of the next turn... and those stacks were put in a single turn!

There are previous 3 cost cards that are way worse than this, the balance does not make any kind of sense.

Yuna also has 0 cost cards (Handle request, 1-6 slice, 3-4 defense, with burn effect) that are way better than Gyeong-mi or Walter's 1 cost cards (Stand off, 1-6 slice that heals 2 on hit, 2-3 blunt)

The core of the issue is the tremendous lack of balance compared to the immediately previous content (Walter - Zwei Ch 3) or even same tier content (Gyeong-mi's squad or Full Stop).

If the only way to beat them is to try your luck to beat a single one of them every try, pray their book drops and their book also drops their pages, then fight them with their very same cards... the game would honestly lose a lot of value.

[Han]

When you will get to Hod 4th abnormality it will be even worse. For the dawn fixer , try to kill Salvador even if you lose to gain his book, use it to gain his page and counter act him and the others, Focus philip at all cost or he get too strong. Then kill Yuna, Salvador will be the easiest afterward. Try to prep yourself with Brawl x Scratch that on 2 chara and be very offensive, don't forget salvador page give you +3 def at the beginning and your enemy has it too so attacking them with your best attack is not the best idea during the first turn. I didn't find much difficulty with porcy thanks to the carnival page and the fact everyone else was dead pretty quickly (Also keep in mind i used the floor of General work so you may want to differ your strategy slightly depending on which floor you are using/ if they use defensive abnormality ect..)

To be honest, it finally feel a bit hard. The game this far felt like it gave you everything so easily , it's refreshing to see the ''defeat'' screen a bit.

[Taihou]

Originally posted by Hanrazen:

When you will get to Hod 4th abnormality it will be even worse. For the dawn fixer , try to kill Salvador even if you lose to gain his book, use it to gain his page and counter act him and the others, Focus philip at all cost or he get too strong. Then kill Yuna, Salvador will be the easiest afterward. Try to prep yourself with Brawl x Scratch that on 2 chara and be very offensive, don't forget salvador page give you +3 def at the beginning and your enemy has it too so attacking them with your best attack is not the best idea during the first turn. I didn't find much difficulty with porcy thanks to the carnival page and the fact everyone else was dead pretty quickly

To be honest, it finally feel a bit hard. The game this far felt like it gave you everything so easily , it's refreshing to see the ''defeat'' screen a bit.

It's quite sad to hear that in order to beat the next content you need to use... the next content.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Ordirehv]

Just Cleared the level. I killed Salvador and lost like 3 times. Burn his book and got the page of him. His book is so OP. Cleared using book of Liwei and the two gunners on Full-Stop and also used Malkuth(using Salvador book). U srsly need 4 ppl on the team to clear this

[FlavorTown]

It was okay. Beat porcu and then attempt Dawn with 4 guys

[Acds]

They finally made the game a challenge. That is until you do the abno first, get 4 librarians, put on Mars, Olga, and two more 2 speed dice pages, and you stomp. You get 8 cards a turn, with that much damage output you can focus down Salvador pretty quick (use the Carnival 5 stagger on hit card to stagger him quickly through all his resistances), after that the remaining 2 are relatively easy. Go for any of the abnos first to get a level 4 floor, then just move all your best pages to it. Remember you don't need to actually win the battle to get their books, just kill one of them, you can get a book even if you ultimately lose.

It's only a spike in difficulty if you go at the new encounter immediately with just 3 librarians (still doable, but gonna need optimized decks or a lot of luck).

[Dawdas]

Honestly the worst part about it is Philips bonus,because when he's on level 2 he can roll 11s on a 4-7 3 times. When i made him flee first was the first and only time all my librarians survived.
I also equipped my librarians with armor that endured slash.

[Koleda]

What I did was beat Yuna at the first fight, then beat Salvador only to unlock the abnormality battles then go back and beat them all as you get the 4th librarian once you do an abno battle

[Shbnfc]

It was a fun and somewhat challenging fight as 3 on 3. It's again too easy once you unlock 4 librarians. I hope the difficulty goes up higher. Loving all the updates in any case, the lore, new characters and seeing what the former sephiras are up to is great.

[Finikksu]

Originally posted by Shbnfc:

It was a fun and somewhat challenging fight as 3 on 3. It's again too easy once you unlock 4 librarians. I hope the difficulty goes up higher. Loving all the updates in any case, the lore, new characters and seeing what the former sephiras are up to is great.

When we reach 5 librarias we wont be able to out number the enemy anymore. So this is a for-now strategy.

[Han]

I agree with Shbnfc , a three on three feel good against them
It feel fair and difficult at the same time, which i hope is how every 'important fight' will feel like

[Taihou]

Originally posted by Finikksu:

When we reach 5 librarias we wont be able to out number the enemy anymore. So this is a for-now strategy.

I agree with you, if the tactics to beat them is "have a clear advantage" against them... it won't felt as good.

It reminds me of the first battles of the game where it was just Roland, it was hard, but it didn't feel unfair. That's how it should feel.

The Carnival was okay, they had some surprising mechanics mixed but it was nothing outrageous.

Full Stop were hard, truly hard, but that's because they introduced a new mechanic which was guns, and guns are canonically overpowered and they come with their own limitation, so the balance is given in that form.

But Dawn was... it was simply unfair because they were given better value cards and traits, and the only way to turn it against them was to grab what they use.

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I feel they should introduce some kind of growth mechanic, back then Pierre cards were truly good, I was a big fan of using her cards (and then her deck), but right now bringing her page is simply suicide. I wish there was a way to reinforce her page, or the value of her rolls, so you can keep using your favourite pages even as the game progresses. And I would be okay with introducing a farming mechanic here, because it's something you're doing because you want to.

Maybe a mechanic that could be called "Prologue" and "Epilogue", where you feed pages individually to a level 20 page, maybe another level 20 page, you prestige the first and the page you feed gives the other one something, like increasing the speed values from 1-4 to 2-5, maybe giving it a passive trait (Speed Dice +1), things like that. And you can do this several times.

Otherwise, there's literally no reason to use the old pages, and I personally feel it's quite a shame because it ends up invisibilizing the previous content, forcing the player to just expect the next and ignore the past one.

[Han]

''Gun are canonically overpowered'' Didn't they say basically gun are worthless against good opponent and cost an arm ? Even if good against , well grade 9 ect.. and it make killing 'easy' , i think they are as strong as gun in jojo

[The Hate of Haters]

Although a hard reception, I didn't find it to be as "unfair" as you coined it to be. When I went through this reception it took me about 2 tries to win 3x3 without any of the new cards, and the first time I lost just because I underestimated Phillip's scaling and got wiped by him at the end, my second try went through smoothly after I understood who I should focus in which order (Phillip->Yuna->Salvador). Furthermore, this stage became a complete joke after I got 4 librarians and Salvador's page, but I still found it to be a really fun and challenging reception before that.