too hard

[Dani]

I just finished the first boss and reach the city, but since then there's a difficulty peak I can't understand.

- I die in 3-4 hits but enemies can take 10-15 before die. Combat become a patience test, hit the enemy 2 or 3 times, run away and repeat. Also enemy hits cut your attack, but your attack don´t stun enemies.
- The fist boss drop a rare 2H sword what is literally unusable, the attack animation is too slow. Still usin the first sword I found, what causes 6 damage and can't upgrade because I don't have materials.
- Some big enemies can stunlock you and kill you in a single combo.
- Even if I block the attack with a shield, I'll lose 1/5 of my health and parry is too risky because If fail I'll lose 1/3 of my health bar. Only dodge is viable.
- In a game where you die so much, repair cost should be removed or increase the coins found.

I expect this game be a mix of souls/elden ring and Diablo, but right now the only thing I'm enjoying is platforming and exploration. I don't know If I miss something or the combat is designed to be this way...

[Omence072]

Like most soulslike games, don't get hit. Learn enemy attack patterns and learn how to best use your preferred weapon. I have a two hander with good reach, so I learned to time the initial attack based on distance and movement of the enemy.
Focus on upgrading your gear and making sure you don't go too heavy in weight class. You can also go back to Mariners keep and the shallows to level up, farms mats and gear.
The difficulty spike you are seeing is a very intentional design. It goes by 10 levels or so and you have that tier to work through to learn the combat and your chosen gear and setup. It's a pretty cool system in my opinion. Too many games throw gear at you with 0.1% stat increases so you are constantly swapping gear. Here you get time to use it and upgrade it.
Eventually you get to the upper end of your current world tier and can easily destroy enemies.

[Edward van Helgen]

It can take some time to getting used to the combat. Observe the different attack patterns. Look for openings and then strike. Also, you can (and probably should) upgrade your gear at the smithy in sacrament. Farm materials in the first area - the mobs will respawn after a while so that will help you in getting more levels.

Think about putting 4-5 points to increase your capacity so that you can swith to a few piecces of mesh armor. This way you will take less damage.

[Funky Monk]

Learn & practice your parry! Thats how you stun enemies and get openings for more attacks. There are attacks that you cant parry, they make a characteristic sound, those you want to evade.

[H0b0t]

Or if you are having performance issue like myself, backstab is the best option.
It does a lot of damage and you are invincible during the animation.
It can be tricky because most of the time the prompt ( little skull icon) does not show up.
Bad side: does not work on bosses and creatures (sirens, wolves, etc...)

[Menthur]

start a new realm and farm the starting area including the keep. gather mats, level up a bit, then kill the 1st boss in that new realm again. go to rookery and increase inventory space. (recommended to max out ring slots first) you can do that as many times as you want.

if you gathered enough materials. join your original realm again, upgrade your gear as far as possible. upgrade smithy and general goods vendor.

around level 10-12 continue main quest. go sewers. try to complete main quest chain there.

[Bandit17]

To add another tip that works for me: I prefer putting a lot of points into my main stat. So if you go strength build than that is where most of your points should be going into. A few points into health, stamina and load are fine early on as well but bumping up your main stat makes sure you can kill quickly thus not getting hit as much.

Also, stay away from getting too heavy. Fat rolling can be death for the novice. If you made mistakes and put points into stats you can't/or will not be using than it's best to reroll the char. Finally, like someone has said, the best tactic is to master not getting hit. Good luck!

[Srg.Mimoso]

Mejora, si eres malo...sigue practicando.
PD: the difficulty is correct.

[Sgt.JESUS]

Dont get greedy, even if you see that enemy health bar almost empty you should know that if you run out of stamina you are a sitting duck, specially if you are fighting multiple opponents.
Go for weapons that have good running attacks, like sword and staff, at least i played with those in my 2 chars, they are awesome, axe and two hander i didnt like, gotta test daggers and spear, bow too.
Running attacks are a good way to kills those big brutes when they give you a opening.

[Faymantra]

Once you are in town, go ENCHANT your weapon for 1 silver. That helps a bit for early stage, but stats will be RNG. Good luck!

[YourFatMom]

still people complain, when i´m allrdy beating the game fists only. LUL

[😒]

It is too hard. The devs have the metrics though so if they see people quitting before they even get to town, or as soon as they do it will inform them that changes should be made. They see how many people finish the game, get to whatever level then stop, fav weapon etc etc.

One hopes they are not interested in a gatekeeper community-only as players. We'll see.

[Jacky]

Originally posted by Faymantra:

Once you are in town, go ENCHANT your weapon for 1 silver. That helps a bit for early stage, but stats will be RNG. Good luck!

or ruin your weapon forever by adding a -50% reduction to heals or negative XP on hit. Do not Enchant unless you have a bunch of the same weapons to try. Then enchant them all and keep a good one. That is the one to upgrade further.
Enchanting, like many of the game mechanics in this game are not implemented in a fun way. Pure RNG, nothing to learn.

This isn't "souls like" and now that the difficulty is being reduced every couple of patches it does not get better.

[K. Hauzer]

Originally posted by Dani:

I just finished the first boss and reach the city, but since then there's a difficulty peak I can't understand.

- I die in 3-4 hits but enemies can take 10-15 before die. Combat become a patience test, hit the enemy 2 or 3 times, run away and repeat. Also enemy hits cut your attack, but your attack don´t stun enemies.
- The fist boss drop a rare 2H sword what is literally unusable, the attack animation is too slow. Still usin the first sword I found, what causes 6 damage and can't upgrade because I don't have materials.
- Some big enemies can stunlock you and kill you in a single combo.
- Even if I block the attack with a shield, I'll lose 1/5 of my health and parry is too risky because If fail I'll lose 1/3 of my health bar. Only dodge is viable.
- In a game where you die so much, repair cost should be removed or increase the coins found.

I expect this game be a mix of souls/elden ring and Diablo, but right now the only thing I'm enjoying is platforming and exploration. I don't know If I miss something or the combat is designed to be this way...

WTF....
1. see 2
2. dont still use the first sword, use another weapon. put on some armor and rings or gather upgrade mats WTF, u dont know how to do that?
3. see 2 use dodge........
4. see 3
5. already been lowered a lot, u didnt get enough huh?!

P.S. What a cry....

[K. Hauzer]

Originally posted by Jacky:

Originally posted by Faymantra:

Once you are in town, go ENCHANT your weapon for 1 silver. That helps a bit for early stage, but stats will be RNG. Good luck!

or ruin your weapon forever by adding a -50% reduction to heals or negative XP on hit. Do not Enchant unless you have a bunch of the same weapons to try. Then enchant them all and keep a good one. That is the one to upgrade further.
Enchanting, like many of the game mechanics in this game are not implemented in a fun way. Pure RNG, nothing to learn.

This isn't "souls like" and now that the difficulty is being reduced every couple of patches it does not get better.

As he said. RNG, so what?! Go start blaming looter shooters for rng drops LOL =)))

[Zelgadas]

The difficulty isn't too out of line with other soulslikes (though I do think it's a touch harder than average), but the real issue (in my opinion) is punishing reinforcement loops. So like, in most Fromsoft games, when you die you drop currency (which you can retrieve) and lose progress, but you get your healing items back, and there isn't really a permanent penalty for the most part. You can learn, get better at the game, and if you die just try again.

In this game, death is a bit of a double-whammy: you don't get back your healing items, and you lose durability on your equipped items, which costs gold to repair. These two things have the unfortunate effect of disproportionately punishing players who are struggling, while not being that big a deal for players who aren't.

This is offset a bit by the fact that enemies don't respawn, but if you're dealing with a particularly difficult fight, like a boss or a group of enemies, then the feedback loop kicks in and your repeated deaths get increasingly more punishing.

In addition to the tangible effect on difficulty this has, there are two other issues that crop up.

First, there's the psychological effect. When you perceive that you're losing progress with each death, you're much more likely to get tilted, play worse, rage quit the game and never play it again.

Second, the solution to both of these reinforcement loops is to grind. Grind currency, grind healing items, go back in stronger. And, while this does technically mitigate those loops, it's not exactly a fun way to play the game for most people. If what you're enjoying in the game is exploring new areas, getting new story beats, and so forth... well, grinding is basically the opposite of that.

I think the people who argue that the game is too hard have a valid point, and the people who don't agree also have a valid point of view. For them it *isn't* too hard. But people have different levels of ability, patience, and free time, and it's important to acknowledge that. If the game isn't being designed with the people who are struggling in mind, that's okay, but make that very, very clear *before* people buy the game. And, if you've got reinforcement loops that punish players who are struggling... well, your game probably isn't as approachable as it should be if you want it to be commercially successful.