Cavern combat needs a LOT of work

[chevy]

I'm probably going to get hit with "get gud skrub" or "skill issues" or the like, but after having played the previous forest game for over 300 hours the leap of difficulty in combat has spiked - maybe not so much in the over world, but in the caves specifically.

Cave combat seems very sporadic with pockets of extremely high enemy density to almost nothing in some areas, with high density areas sporting (usually) several higher-tier mutants.

When I say "higher-tier", I am directly pointing at the "thousand finger puke monsters" and "conjoined twins" monsters.

In The Forest, combat was relatively simple in large groups of enemies as, with a weapon fast enough, you could group them and stun lock them, or use a bow to efficiently dispatch them, or you had tanky enough armor that you could soak some hits without much issue. This was a cheesy way to play, I agree, but the pendulum has now swung in the completely opposite direction I feel and it doesn't feel good to play.

There's a few main issues now in the gameplay that I feel could be addressed -

> Cavern enemies are way too dense in some areas. My most recent encounter in one cave had 3 or 4 "puke monsters" with 4 or 5 "blind" mutants all in one area. With the current tuning (damage wise and health wise) this is a lot to go through, especially when players may not have obtained better weaponry (absolutely massive map).
> Mutants overall seem to have healthpools that are tuned to the player having guns - I've not delved deep enough into the game to have guns yet (maybe my mistake?) but using the fireaxe, a bow with several types of arrows, and explosives (too much water to make molotovs actually useful), the puke mutants tanked over a dozen arrows and still were going strong.
> Enemies chunk your health, and your armor.
> Mutants (again, puke monster) just never stop attacking when you get close enough to hit them, and with the amount of damage they do I've had them chunk through entire healthbars of armor trying to kill one of them (this might actually be a skill issue but I was getting frustrated at this point).

I guess, really, my major complaint is with the "thousand finger puke monsters". They're not really fun to go against in their current state of being very tanky, with fast attacks, and doing truckloads of damage per swing. I feel like they need to be adjusted, or maybe their spawn limited - or maybe put an "easy mode" for gamers like me who just kinda wanna chill and be bad at video games x) Being 10 hours in I don't really expect to have the best of the best, but given the map size and a general lack of any handholding in where to go, I dunno chief, I'm just not impressed by it.

Much love to the Endnite team and regardless I'm already having fun, and I'm excited to watch the game go through it's Early Access journey just like I did its predecessor.

(PS - I'm watching arrows literally go through enemies without damage. Pls fix? :( )

[Red]

I have some advice for both, if it interests you.

If you hit the puking mutant in the leg, it'll kneel for an extended period of time, during of which you can just wail on it for a while. Its only attack seems to be a double swipe with its full body. It can do this over and over, but you can definitely weave in attacks near the end of the second swipe, then backing up a bit before they keep going. I've only had to make them kneel twice for a kill. I'm sure you know this, but be sure to aim for the head. Charged melee attacks can instantly decapitate most lower enemies if you aim it right, and definitely do more damage if decapitation isn't possible.

The conjoined monster doesn't move forward much with each swipe. Sprint towards it while charging a melee attack, land it, then back up. If it attacks, you should be safe. If not, you can probably just do it again. I took a couple of hits getting these down, but never had issues with them again. I don't feel like their health pools are too inflated, even just using the normal ol' stick spear. This one is a fairly straight forward hit and run. Charged attacks stun this thing pretty consistently in my experience.

In your defense, I haven't used the bow yet, so I'm not sure how fighting these mutants with ranged work, but hopefully what I said helps you a bit.

[chevy]

Originally posted by Red:

I have some advice for both, if it interests you.

If you hit the puking mutant in the leg, it'll kneel for an extended period of time, during of which you can just wail on it for a while. Its only attack seems to be a double swipe with its full body.

The leg hit is definitely useful, thank you - but yeah, I dunno, I've noticed them actually whirl around when I try to get behind them too, and chipping away one hit at a time between their attacks, and then you mistime once and get hit and blam - that's a big chunk of hp for a mistake. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Fortunately the conjoined doesn't give me as much of an issue, I think they're just slower on the turn around.

Maybe it just really an issue for me with how dense some of the areas are with the narrow hallways - in the OG game the big mutant caves were typically pretty big and gave you a lot of room to move around like an idiot haha. Maybe the bow damage feels low because as I said I notice arrows just going straight through enemies but early access will be early access x)

Cheers!