Cleared insane difficulty 100%, some thoughts...

[Zuvio]

The game is a lot better on insane. More moves and mob diversity is great. Snaptors, golems, rock beasts and powering up boars and spiders are great and make more interesting fights. There is no content addition afaik, but that's ok since this patch was advertised as a difficulty patch.

The numbers tuning (damage given and received) feels minor at first, but ramps up hard in the end. Most critters need to be hit more and of course you are punished harder for mistakes. But it doesn't feel unfair. It wasn't until the endgame fights were the difficulty became really hard.

The secret hewers camp fight was absolute madness and all I did was chugging pots and casting blaze. The bygones are the star of this patch, one by one they are fine but in numbers in smaller arenas they become bat*** crazy. The amount of roots and stuns goes up dramatically and you are starving for stamina.

One difficulty upgrade was the powering of the crystals in the Kawd Moor, just before entering the Red Tower. This, I think, was a major flaw. Now, along with all the normal bloody critters, big tree like mobs spawn, sometimes three at a time. These mobs have the life drain skill from the Leshen. If you see two or more up, run! I dont know how you are supposed to do this without running, you dont have three stuns ready to go for them. Not to mention all the other mobs hitting on you, the spitters slowing you if you get hit. So it was run in, blaze as many mobs as you can and if you see the life drain trees, run away and go again (they despawn). Yeah, insane, but not really fun. I consider it a flaw, but maybe other players have better ways of dealing with them.

My build was pure MIND leveling with shield talents. Perfect block + stun + focus regain is really good and crucial to beat Leshens.

All in all, I would not call the Insane difficulty really insane to do, just the optional fight and the crystal powering are insane. The rest is tougher and made this 4th playthrough still fun to do. Thanks to the developers for making this awesome game and I am looking forward to the DLC!

I made a step by step guide detailing my entire journey, have a look if you want. Its not for 1st time players. All the info suits insane difficulty, but also classic. So if you need a step by step progress guide, have a look: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388407384

[Harwulf]

I just finished my first play-through ( started way before all the patches), and was looking forward to starting a new campaign. I really appreciate your run down of the new mode. I'll update this post when I beat it on insane, and let you know what I think.

[Nortd]

Did I miss the news about DLC?

[F4/80]

Thanks for the guide, Zuvio!
I finished on insane, too and as you said there are 2 flaws on insane:
- optional fight for the secret mask in the remnant camp, which is cosmetical only, and that's why i didn't do
- blood moor was absolutely not nice, you can only run and fight

After i got the ultimate bow with stun skill it was really easy, cause you can shoot from far away. Also exectue is nice but shadow reapers are not dead in 1 hit, so i used bow from afar.
After you get fire circle spell you can almost 1 hit everything except undeads and bosses.
Btw iron spikes are very nice to slow down enemies and for harder fights you can prepare and place on some areas like arena or other places a lot of traps.

[Zuvio]

Thank you for contributing to it!

I never did a bow build myself. I was wondering if bow could clear the game 100% on insane? I did another run for the hardcore achivement but on classic mode. I did the axe til 50 and pump strength. Axe build still feels sooo powerful. I didn't do the optional fights though, just wanted to get the run done. I think axe build could also do it. Not sure about spear and sword&board. Everyone needs shadow fragments anyway, 33 bygones are just too much :)