Elite Enemies

[SigilFey]

Firstly, absolutely smashing game! I am loving this. Played up to about level 4 with my first party (since launch). Didn't really play all that much before release.

Overall, the game does a great job of introducing players to mechanics, balancing that information with mystery and discovery, and (most appreciated) not trying to lock the player down to a "linear start", where every, single action is dictated and pre-designed. It's been a ton of fun!

But "Elite Enemies" are baffling to me. I'm honestly not sure why this is in the game in the first area. (Playing on region-locked, here.)

I like the concept, but the first elite, Matthias Lund, comes out of friggin' left field and seems to throw all the established mechanics out the window to replace them with number-crunching BS. There's nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in the game that indicates that the game is about to transform from a sensible, extremely well-balanced, tactical TBS into what appears to be a level- / loot-based grind to defeat 1 enemy with 10 troops.

Generally, I like the concept of elites! I was expecting a surprise after the finding the massacre at the windmill. I also like the idea of an enemy that can take multiple actions per turn.

In practice, however, the execution is...sloppy, cheap, and frustrating. There's no "tactic" that can be used to defeat him reliably. He's level 3. He's able to insta-kill 4 of my level 3 characters outright. He will annihilate the other 5 in the next turn. I've now fought him five times. I've tried bleed, poison, debuffs, surrounded bonus, focusing on ranged attacks, bringing animals to the fight, and using all the oils I have access two. He's wiped out my entire party before the end of the 3rd turn, and I've only managed to get through his armor twice.

What's this supposed to be? Frankly, it feels like a totally different game concept. I was expecting a mission that got into tough choices or multiple scenarios in a chain...but instead, it's just one, rather silly "boss" character that's 5x bigger than you, 5x faster than you, and 5x stronger than you. Also, clearly established game mechanics no longer apply, as he's basically immune to damage-over-time, turn/round order, and damage/defense mechanics.

Furthermore, there is nothing in-game to introduce, define, or qualify "elite" characters. It's just a bunch of nonsense that appears out of thin air, halts all progress, and raises a wall at a very early stage of the game...for what? I don't even know why it exists. It's jarring, completely unfounded and unqualified by the rest of the game, and feels totally out-of-place.

Again, I really like the concept, but I feel the present iteration of elites is completely missing the mark. It's like a gorgeous steak dinner, but in one corner of the plate, the chef put a lump of cottage cheese covered in rainbow sprinkles and said: "Bet you can't eat that!" It's just totally out of place, at least at such an early game stage, and the balance is just non-existent.

[Robin of Spiritwood]

There are a lot of video guides/playthroughs to explain the specific mechanics.
Lund is more of a puzzle than a real fight.

The other elites are much better to fight anyhow, and have better gear to win.

[SigilFey]

While this may be true, where's the qualification in the game? Players should not need to watch YouTube videos or read Reddit posts in order to understand simple game mechanics.

This is the polar opposite of literally every other aspect of gameplay thus far. I think the the entire idea and how it's incorporated needs to be reconsidered.

[Stardustfire]

Lund is no mere Elite (thats the guys with the Red * above there Head, big difference) he is a Region Champion, a overboss, each of them has its own mechanic. there is a reason his Bounty stays on red dangerous. and if you struggle with champions stay a long range away from any arena....

no youtube needed, you outright see at the start where the journey goes when you look at the timeline icons and look what the actions do.

Nearly each Champiosn Bounty talks about mass murder, guess why they can do that alone.... And each one of them gives a Legendary Weapon as reward, they are no freebe handouts.

[Doom_Cookies]

Lund is actually extremely intuitive by design. Like most enemy AI, he targets the nearest enemy, but to drive this point home he's outright given an ability that explicitly states as much and shows you who his target is. The fact that his attack takes a turn (as in, he sets it up one turn and uses it his next) on top of knowing who he will attack next is the big, in-game hint to the primary strategy you should use to beat him:

Always keep the guy you want him to target next - someone who has not moved yet - closest to him. Once he targets them and starts winding up his AoE, have that unit take their turn and attack him before retreating further away. He will then target the now-closest ally, and you repeat the process with them. Just repeat this process until he is defeated, and you can win without ever being hit (though you'll likely find you make a small mistake and end up getting a unit hit once or twice). It may take a few attempts before you get it down.

You actually can't just outlevel and outgear Lund if you happen to play on Adaptive, but he's still perfectly reasonable to beat on the mode. He's designed to be beaten by a specific strategy, not power scaling. As one of the posters above said, his fight is pretty much a puzzle. You are not supposed to get hit.

That said, funny enough, I did somehow manage to kill Lund on my first run (Region Locked, Experienced/Experienced) by facetanking him with a tank on-level, my back to the fence so he always stayed the closest unit. I only had, I believe, 2/5 units left out of near death state by the time I barely eked out a victory.

[SigilFey]

Lots of what you say makes sense. Perhaps I was a bit too generous on lauding the game for introducing mechanics so well. Thus far, I've found nothing whatsoever about "Red Star" enemies, I've not seen a bounty for him at any point, and what you say about the target ability is incorrect.

What are Red Star enemies? I've never seen anything like that before. I've fought a few enemies that were "leaders", inspiring those around them with bonuses, and I dealt with them okay.

There was no bounty on the board. I stopped off at a random farm house going back from an "Easy" bounty mission hoping to trade, and there was some woman crying about how bandits killed their precious Lucilla. I just went from there and wound up facing Lund in the middle of some random field. No bounty.

As for the targeting ability, yup -- that happens. Bit he's able to both move and attack twice after targeting an enemy. So...how am I supposed to protect or move characters if he gets to attack them before the turn ends, and they can't move again? That's pretty silly. It's not tactical, it's just me knowing which character is about to be taken out of play, and there's nothing my present party can possibly do about that. When I specifically tried to stay out of range, I went through all of my throwing weapons, tried to kite him with spears so that no one would be engaged, and I never got through his armor before he destroyed my entire team. We're all level 3.

My only deduction is that I somehow blundered into this way too early on. I'm seeing how, with more abilities, it might be more of a puzzle, but there's no way characters at my level can possibly defeat him. Plus, there was no indication in-game of what was happening until the combat began. Right now, it's just looking at a whole bunch of mechanics that I can't do anything with.

My suggestion is to either restrict the event until players have the requisites to deal with his abilities or specifically indicate to the player that this an extremely high-level event.

+ Battle mechanics were introduced and explained brilliantly.
+ Individual character abilities are explained fantastically.
+ Overland travel, exploration, and interaction mechanics are explained beautifully.
+ Camp mechanics are explained clearly and accurately.
++ Capturing animals is explained very well -- in the moment, no less! Great surprise!

-- Elite enemies...are not explained at all and make no, up-front sense. They're just something that happens for no apparent reason with no warning and no clear indication of what you're supposed to do or how difficult it is going to be.

When I saw the red crown over his head, I though it was something special...but had no idea it was the guy I was looking for. I though I was trying to find the leader of the brigands that guy you can rescue at the windmill was trying to kill.

When I heard him muttering about Lucilla, I immediately thought, "Oh, that's the father!" And I was expecting some sort of interaction. I was utterly confused when all I could do was attack or leave. Why? Why would there be no dialogue?

Then, when I decided to attack him, I wound up in a fight I don't have a cold snowball's prayer in the west end of hell of overcoming.

I do believe the mechanic could work, but this is a hot mess. It doesn't feel "lazy" or anything -- that's why I tried it 5 times. But after that, I feel like it fails the Sally<-->Anne Test.

[Doom_Cookies]

Originally posted by SigilFey:

Lots of what you say makes sense. Perhaps I was a bit too generous on lauding the game for introducing mechanics so well. Thus far, I've found nothing whatsoever about "Red Star" enemies, I've not seen a bounty for him at any point, and what you say about the target ability is incorrect.

You don't start seeing "Elites", with the red stars above them, for another few levels. They're just normal enemies with a slight stat boost, kind of like leaders but with a lower stat bonus and no party-wide buff. The higher level enemies get, the more of them will end up being elites.

Which board missions appear is 100% random. You may never see a particular bounty, or it might pop up from the start.

This game is great at introducing very basic mechanics, but really awful at introducing everything beyond that. This is pretty much the first of "everything beyond that" that a player is likely to run into. :P

Some of the tooltip translations also make little sense, at least in English, so you have to experiment a bit sometimes. The upgrade tooltip to one of Spearman's abilities quite literally doesn't make sense, and I'm still not quite sure what it even does after using it for a good 20 hours.

Originally posted by SigilFey:

As for the targeting ability, yup -- that happens. Bit he's able to both move and attack twice after targeting an enemy. So...how am I supposed to protect or move characters if he gets to attack them before the turn ends, and they can't move again? That's pretty silly. It's not tactical, it's just me knowing which character is about to be taken out of play, and there's nothing my present party can possibly do about that. When I specifically tried to stay out of range, I went through all of my throwing weapons, tried to kite him with spears so that no one would be engaged, and I never got through his armor before he destroyed my entire team. We're all level 3.

I believe you might be overthinking it. You just never take a unit's turn until its inside his AoE. That way you can move, hit him, and run away and out of his AoE so that the current unit is no longer the closest to him, forcing him to skip dealing damage and retarget the next unit. You repeat this until you win without straying from the strategy. No abilities needed, although they certainly can make it easier (especially "Run"/"First Aid"). But all you actually need is Move and a weapon. The fight is a turn order and positioning puzzle.

Oh, it's worth noting that he can't be Engaged (and you can get back attacks on him) while he's preparing his AoE, so that's the time to strike. Else you get stuck.

Generally speaking, his turns will be staggered with yours, so this should almost always be possible. There may potentially be some rare instances where he actually gets two turns in a row (where he can start up his AoE and immediately unleash it, slaughtering your unit), but if this happens at all then it is rare, and it will just amount to having one less unit to work with for the remainder of the battle, as the near-death unit will need to retreat away from him so they don't actually die.

Don't get me wrong, I struggled with him my first time around, too. But once you start seeing how the battle is supposed to work, you'll be amazed at how simple it actually is.

Originally posted by SigilFey:

When I heard him muttering about Lucilla, I immediately thought, "Oh, that's the father!" And I was expecting some sort of interaction. I was utterly confused when all I could do was attack or leave. Why? Why would there be no dialogue?

Rather ironically, the bounty for him that you never saw has a short overview about his situation. He's gone berserk from grief and become a danger to himself and others, and so needs to be stopped.

I really wish the boss bounties were surefire spawns on the mission board so they're always up for context.

[Shogun]

theres no need for multiple page essay to admit you are still in the FIRST zone trying to fight a boss the does show some warning icon over them, clearly showing the difficulty. red usually means stop or warning. multiple times, for no reason, he doesnt even chase you.

not that its hard to understand but you do get early hints, green or no colour icon = easy fights, orange harder fights, what do you think red will be?

[fireinthetrash]

Originally posted by SigilFey:

When I saw the red crown over his head, I though it was something special...but had no idea it was the guy I was looking for. I though I was trying to find the leader of the brigands that guy you can rescue at the windmill was trying to kill.

When I heard him muttering about Lucilla, I immediately thought, "Oh, that's the father!" And I was expecting some sort of interaction. I was utterly confused when all I could do was attack or leave. Why? Why would there be no dialogue?

Because he is MAD.

And if battle seems hopeless you always can strategically retreat. Your mercs will be wounded but still alive.

[SigilFey]

Originally posted by Doom_Cookies:

You don't start seeing "Elites", with the red stars above them, for another few levels. They're just normal enemies with a slight stat boost, kind of like leaders but with a lower stat bonus and no party-wide buff. The higher level enemies get, the more of them will end up being elites.

Which board missions appear is 100% random. You may never see a particular bounty, or it might pop up from the start.

This game is great at introducing very basic mechanics, but really awful at introducing everything beyond that. This is pretty much the first of "everything beyond that" that a player is likely to run into. :P

Some of the tooltip translations also make little sense, at least in English, so you have to experiment a bit sometimes. The upgrade tooltip to one of Spearman's abilities quite literally doesn't make sense, and I'm still not quite sure what it even does after using it for a good 20 hours.

Ah, okay. Is his appearance at this stage also random? If so, I think that should be something that's perhaps level-gated to ensure it doesn't create this sort of wall. It's a jarring interruption of what was otherwise really nice pacing and difficulty for the early game, while players are still figuring everything out.

Originally posted by Doom_Cookies:

I believe you might be overthinking it. You just never take a unit's turn until its inside his AoE. That way you can move, hit him, and run away and out of his AoE so that the current unit is no longer the closest to him, forcing him to skip dealing damage and retarget the next unit. You repeat this until you win without straying from the strategy. No abilities needed, although they certainly can make it easier (especially "Run"/"First Aid"). But all you actually need is Move and a weapon. The fight is a turn order and positioning puzzle.

Oh, it's worth noting that he can't be Engaged (and you can get back attacks on him) while he's preparing his AoE, so that's the time to strike. Else you get stuck.

Generally speaking, his turns will be staggered with yours, so this should almost always be possible. There may potentially be some rare instances where he actually gets two turns in a row (where he can start up his AoE and immediately unleash it, slaughtering your unit), but if this happens at all then it is rare, and it will just amount to having one less unit to work with for the remainder of the battle, as the near-death unit will need to retreat away from him so they don't actually die.

Don't get me wrong, I struggled with him my first time around, too. But once you start seeing how the battle is supposed to work, you'll be amazed at how simple it actually is.

I did try something like that twice: "letting him come to me." Doesn't work, because once he's targeted a character, he'll make it over to them no matter what. Or, he'll switch targets once I've attacked him with a different character. Once his "cone of attack" thing wears off, and no one is in range. Then, of course, he'll target one of my guys that has already moved.

Every turn, he gets two "marked for death" things, two "cone attack" things (where he spins, causes upwards of 60 damage to every target in range, and causes bleeding), can move at least 3 times, and can attack normally once.

For my squad of 9, the fight is absolutely impossible. No matter what, I normally loose 2 or 3 characters during the first turn. And it's already over.

Originally posted by Doom_Cookies:

I really wish the boss bounties were surefire spawns on the mission board so they're always up for context.

Or that there were a series of, say, 3 missions that all comprised the final, epic fight -- exactly. That's more or less what I started thinking as soon as I figured out that this was a sort of "forced fight". (As in, there's no way to negotiate with him or side with him.) It just felt like a total departure from literally every other encounter or engagement I had seen up to that point. Wildly off-beat.

Originally posted by Shogun:

theres no need for multiple page essay to admit you are still in the FIRST zone trying to fight a boss the does show some warning icon over them, clearly showing the difficulty. red usually means stop or warning. multiple times, for no reason, he doesnt even chase you.

not that its hard to understand but you do get early hints, green or no colour icon = easy fights, orange harder fights, what do you think red will be?

I'm glad you have no problem with it. If you don't feel like discussing things in detail, no one will force you. Enjoy the game!

Originally posted by derbolschewik:

Because he is MAD.

And if battle seems hopeless you always can strategically retreat. Your mercs will be wounded but still alive.

Yeah, I get that, but the presentation (at least, if you don't have the bounty) is a mire of confusion. I don't care if there's something I can use to get around it -- I'm talking about he effect it has on the game experience:

1.) I randomly go to a farm. There's a woman who claims that she's lost her precious Lucilla, and her husband has gone off to the windmill to kill them all. (So far, so good.)

2.) I go to the windmill, and there's a massacre. A guy is there, dying, scared out of his mind, saying he killed them all. He's begging for medicine. (Here, I was already confused.
He's wearing normal, peasant armor. I thought THIS guy was the husband, and some OTHER maniac had come and killed everyone.)

3.) I give him medicine, and he suddenly reveals that he's a brigand, and it's his boss's fault that this happened. They should never have attacked the farmers, and now, he wants to go kill his old leader. (So, wait. What??? I just rescued a bandit!? Now he wants to join. Is this part of the mission? I can't attack him or anything, or send him away...so...is he like a "redeemed" bandit now...or...? What's going on?)

4.) Okay...I take him into the party and set off to go find the bandit leader. I find a random guy in a field to the south with a crown over his head. That must be the quest. Let's do this.

5.) And the guy in the field is Matthius Lund, swearing to Lucilla that he'll kill them all. Ah -- this is father! Let's see. Wait. What? There's no dialogue or anything? I don't want to attack the father...

6.) No option or anything. I guess he's supposed to be out of his mind? Maybe if I fight him, I can calm him down after beating him?

7.) Oh...this is...something totally new. Well, interesting! And it's 9 vs. 1. So this should be doable.

8.) What the flip!? He just insta-killed 3 of my team with one swing and is taking no damage at all. I'm not even halfway through his armor yet. Wait-wait-wait -- the poison and bleeding and weakness all wore off immediately? And he's immune to attacks of opportunity?? And he can disengage without penalty!???

9.) (Four tries later:) And that's every single combination of every single attack, power, ability, item, or tactical approach that I have at my disposal. I can barely get through his armor. What is going on here?

[zaphod]

character has a permanent lvl. if you can't handle it, go away and come back later.

[SigilFey]

Originally posted by zaphod:

character has a permanent lvl. if you can't handle it, go away and come back later.

That's understood. That's not what I'm discussing.

[Stardustfire]

that he dont shown up on the bounty board is unlucky, normaly the region champions show up after max 1 rotation when they are not already at the start board.

when the bleed is a problem for you, the first aid skill can fix that. its a musthave on each of my startcrew exept the tanks who get taunt. later when the training ground is open for businss every crewmember gets it.

at the start you shoud stay away from champions, arenas and crypts, the reward is good (at the champs very dependend if you have someone who can use the weapon and if you like the skill it has) but you need alot of preparation (crypt = torches... ALOT......) and at least a basis of lvl 3 on each merc so they can do at least there specialisation stuff and can generate VPs during combat.

[Doom_Cookies]

Originally posted by SigilFey:

Ah, okay. Is his appearance at this stage also random?

All world bosses are found in the exact same spot every playthrough and can be fought at any time.

Originally posted by SigilFey:

Every turn, he gets two "marked for death" things, two "cone attack" things (where he spins, causes upwards of 60 damage to every target in range, and causes bleeding), can move at least 3 times, and can attack normally once.

Wait, what? I'm not sure I follow.

He has two abilities. The AoE is his "normal attack", the other ability is just to target the closest enemy. And neither of those apply bleeding.

Every turn within a round that he gets, he does exactly the following:

Judgement

1. If he has no target or the target is not the nearest unit, he will target the nearest unit.
   
2. If a unit is within his prepared AoE, the AoE will activate and deal damage.
   
3. If no unit is within his prepared AoE, the AoE will cancel (the red cone will disappear).

Lucilla's Revenge

1. If he is not within range of his target, he will move to them.
   
2. He will begin preparing the AoE (the red cone will appear).

This is everything he does, in detail and in order. He does absolutely nothing else.

Are you sure he's applying Bleeding somehow?

Anyway, the goal is to never have your closest unit, his target, be a unit that has already taken their turn. Once you move out of the way, the next closest unit, his next target, should also be a unit who has not taken their turn yet. This way, you can always move the targeted unit out of the AoE and make him cancel it, repeating until victory.

This is always possible unless he ends up getting Judgement -> Lucilla's Revenge -> Judgment back-to-back-to-back without you having a turn between the latter two. Though it might be possible, I have never seen this happen when all units are alive.

If he ever targets a unit who has already taken their turn and thus cannot move out of the way, then you made a mistake with the positioning.

Don't be afraid to outright skip turns for non-targeted units who do not have enough move to run away from him if they went up to attack him. Your first priority at all times should be to control who he's targeting so that he targets a unit who can move out of the way. If making an attack with a unit would put them in harms way later in the round, maintain distance and skip their turn instead.

This is all a lot easier if you have a decent Move stat on all of your units, mind you, because it gives you more flexibility on how you can position. But it's doable with base move if you're precise in your positioning and think ahead.

[SigilFey]

Thanks for that explanation, Doom-Cookies! I'm thinking I'll start again with a new party and avoid it at first, now that I realize how lots of the other stuff goes. We'll see how it plays this time.

What I can definitely confirm is that he's not acting the way you describe on my end. For me, he would do the following.

1.) Target a character, put the little target icon over their head, but not attack. He would often move toward them, though.

2.) Depending on whether that character was in range, he would either wallop them or switch to the AoE cone attack and prepare to swing.

3.) There are other times where he seems to use one of these actions to just move. The target icon will vanish, and he'll just run somewhere without taking an action. This occurs even if he's "surrounded". He'll just walk out of it with my guys not receiving any attacks of opportunity.

Plus, he gets to do all of that twice each for every, individual turn. That means that even if I manage to move a "targeted" character out of harm's way initially, he'll get to them when he gets to move again. Alternatively, the only way I can interrupt him is to attack him with a melee character that engages him. At that point, he'll simply target that character, then destroy them instead. I can't avoid being attacked by him multiple times each turn. He'll always strike at least two of my characters no matter what. All of his attacks will instantly kill my either of my rangers or my archer. The other characters will normally be sent straight to "Dying" if they survive, so they're effectively out of the fight.

Every single attack that he makes causes 2 stacks of bleeding. So, if any of my characters survive the initial hit, they'll definitely bleed out and die at the end of the turn unless I happen to have another character close by with first aid. This is especially devastating when 2-3 of my characters are hit by the spinning attack. If that happens, it's instantly game over. I have only two characters with shields that can attack him twice each before they're killed outright.

[Doom_Cookies]

This is very, very strange. Can you screenshot his status window or something? He shouldn't have more than two abilities, and neither should be an instant attack. He also shouldn't apply bleeding (bleeding doesn't stack - do you mean Poison?). Furthermore, he shouldn't be getting Judgement->Lucilla's Revenge->Judgment without you getting a turn or two of your own to react. Something is just very weird. It's like we're talking about entirely different bosses or something.

If what you explained is what you've been experiencing the whole time, no wonder you're frustrated. That sounds unbeatable. You're meant to be able to completely avoid taking any hits from him.

You're not using any mods or anything, are you?