Incoming Damage is ridiculous...

[maestro]

Did they tweak something recently?

Because in this newest playthrough, if anything even looks at me funny, my character goes down like a sack of potatoes on normal difficulty. About the only way to actually survive is to cut damage done to player by half in Custom difficulty.

The first shield is absolutely useless, if anything even looks in your direction, it's gone instantly and your health meter doesn't last much longer, 3-4 hits and you're almost dead.

You throw a Pal out and they can take hits, but since every single Pal in the game apparently has ranged attacks, they randomly turn and throw something at you for no reason.

I'm wearing the best armor I have unlocked, and the best shield I can make, and anything near my level just straight up creams me effortlessly.

Meanwhile, the best weapon I have is a crossbow and it takes 4+ shots to kill anything equal to my level, and that's to say nothing about how ridiculous bosses are.

What did they DO to this game in the past couple months? Did the Dark Souls crowd come in and decide the game was too boring and convince the developers to make it absolutely unbalanced and unfair?

Also, it wouldn't be so bad if medicine wasn't so ludicrously hard to get ahold of early-game. The game wants to force you into doing dungeons because that's the only way to find blueprints to make anything because the stuff you learn while leveling up sucks and barely does anything whatsoever, so you need those uncommon/rare/legendary blueprints to make items that are actually usable, but when you go into a dungeon... the final room always has a boss monster with 2-3 buddies which spam ranged attacks and about the only way to survive that is to cheese them with the hallway leading into their room which feels just awful and stupid.

Also, on the subject of dungeons, they apparently don't give ancient knowledge anymore? I was getting them every 1-3 dungeons, but now I've done like 5-6 of them and haven't gotten a single one of those books that gives ancient knowledge. Forcing me to kill bosses for ancient knowledge is ridiculous, because after Chillet, it seems the next boss ain't until Level 20+ and there's like 3-4 recipes that I *could* unlock, but no ancient knowledge and some of them are really useful, esp. that thing that lets you combine pals because they want you to catch dozens of them to levelup.

I dunno why so many indie/small team games end up doing this to their game. Is it because people whine the game is "too easy"? Ignore them. Give them an optional hard difficulty or something, but this is getting tiring seeing this happen to every game around.

[Love]

This game is really best enjoyed on a custom server. You can change almost any setting including drop rates on bosses. You can probably find tons of custom servers on the discord, and online hosting is also reasonably priced.

[Nicodemous52]

I'm not sure how long it's been since you played, but as I understand it not too long before I showed up they had patched a bug where pals were only doing half the intended damage. If you've been gone long enough, that could be part of it.

I think they reallocated some of the resources you get when in the dungeons now. I think they re balanced them to reflect Sakurjima is the highest end content now. I know I started a new toon recently, and the very first dungeon I did, there wasn't even any chests after beating the boss. My guess is either the game deemed I was to low to be rewarded for doing it. Or, it was just a glitch.

Ancient tech points can still be found in higher end dungeons.

[Nicodemous52]

I can also tell you if you've been gone for a long time, they nerfed nails big time. They can still be worth it depending on you circumstances. But best gold farms now are either food or Legendary spheres.

AND, when you notice the achievement for hard mode bosses, it doesn't mean playing them on hard mode. Once you've defeated all six tower bosses, you unlock a "hard mode" version of them, but they can be completed with any world settings as I understand it. I've not completed that on my other save. I've not cleared the oil rig. and there are a couple others I'm missing I can't think of right now.

[Xandor]

I think the game have always been: Early on you die very easily. With armor you become almost immortal.

I started a new playthrough recently since I haven't played in quite a while, I felt like I took a lot of damage early on (and I had no firearm so I couldn't hurt enemies much so I had to wait for my pal to slowly damage the enemies).
After getting the first metal armor with heat resistance I didn't take that much damage anymore.
I can make the pal metal armor and then there is another after that and then there are higher quality items. Also accessory for def. Can also get more def from pal traits.

So I think the damage taken is likely the same as before.

Although I know they nerfed 1 thing and that is that you can no longer have multiple of the same accessory equipped. So you can't have 2 def necklaces before (it gave insane increase in armor, more than it should have). But in return they increased accessory slots to 4.

Ancient knowledge is no problem also. Buy the things that you need/will use and you get way more than you need. Also dungeons still drop the books, I think I got ~4-5 books from the low level dungeons.
You don't need a pal condenser early on, you should reach around level 45 before your storage fill up.

The game is also easy late game once you have firearms. While leveling with my pals that are around level 40 I went and killed a level 45 boss with a normal quality shotgun, I think it took 1.5 magazine to kill it.

[Nicodemous52]

Originally posted by Xandor:

I think the game have always been: Early on you die very easily. With armor you become almost immortal...

Although I know they nerfed 1 thing and that is that you can no longer have multiple of the same accessory equipped.

That's partially true. It's also true that def pendent, def pendent +1, and def pendent +2 are all different accessories. So you can't rock more than one of the exact same thing, you can still emphasize if you want to stress def, atk, or work speed, biome resilience , whatever.

I'd also add they added a way to scale your stats beyond just lvling up. They are capped at a max of 50 points each. but you can farm either materials to make potions, or you can farm dog coins to buy the potions.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Irene ❤:

Err we're not suppose to take hits.
Use the ctrl key to dash roll, or run and slide down, or gliding with a pal. ^ ^;
For weapon, farm the world boss for a legendary machine gun. Things will be fun after.
It started off hard but it gets easier and a lot more fun in late game. Maybe survival games are like that.

You can only roll so much, and the roll is so dang janky.

For example, while fighting Chillet (I fight her every time she's up for the parts and for captures), I've tested the timing on the roll on her two main attacks, the homing ice missiles which are cheap AF, and that dark attack where she lunges at you.

With the homing ice missiles, it is almost impossible to dodge all three of them with rolls. You can usually dodge 2 but one still hits and you gotta PRAY it doesn't cause the frozen status or you're full on dead if you're about the level you're supposed to be for that fight.

The charge attack? I've tried many different timings on the roll and it's still 50/50 if you get hit or not.

You can't roll away from *EVERYTHING* and you're going to get hit, period, especially when everything in the game either has a ranged attack or a lunge that travels 30+ feet (the baseball bat guys are just silly when they fly halfway across the screen at you).

Especially since rolling takes stamina, and early-game, one or two melee swings and 2 rolls and your character is out of breath apparently, it's kind of ridiculous.

I think they reallocated some of the resources you get when in the dungeons now. I think they re balanced them to reflect Sakurjima is the highest end content now. I know I started a new toon recently, and the very first dungeon I did, there wasn't even any chests after beating the boss.

There are chests after the boss, but they just contain random junk and 1 blueprint... and 1 normal tech point book.

My question is... how am I ever supposed to unlock ANY of the purple tech stuff, if NOTHING gives ancient tech points except for the overpowered bosses everywhere?

I mean, yeah, I killed Chillet, but the next one is Penking and I remember he was a right PITA because of the fact that he and all 4+ of his friends can freeze you in place and they all have homing ice missiles and there is no way in hell you're gonna dodge roll all of that crap AND he's in a tiny instance room so no terrain to cheese it with.

[zytimer]

Try doing Penking during night time, trust me.

During night time, Penking and his little flunkies will be asleep, allowing you to instagib or do heavy damage to his flunkies one at a time.

Once you are done dealing with Penking’s little flunkies, you can then deal with Penking all alone without his flunkies.

Just hope the Penking you are dealing with does not have the Nocturnal trait on him, otherwise he will never sleep

[Wantoomany]

So what is the complaint here? The game gives you custom difficulty setting. Is that not enough? Or do you feel the game should be easier, for you, without the shame of resorting to using those custom settings? Because it honestly sounds like this is a rant intended to reduce general difficulty for everyone.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

So what is the complaint here? The game gives you custom difficulty setting. Is that not enough? Or do you feel the game should be easier, for you, without the shame of resorting to using those custom settings? Because it honestly sounds like this is a rant intended to reduce general difficulty for everyone.

The rant is mostly about how the "Normal" mode of the game is tuned to be way too difficult (at least early-game) and that the balance in general of the game just feels "off".

Sure, you can halve the damage taken by your character, but that feels like a kludge and could possibly cause balance problems later, esp since people in the thread are talking about how they end up being immortal in later armors for awhile.

I don't wanna have to be constantly fiddling with my world's difficulty settings to maintain an experience that feels fun and reasonable.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Nicodemous52:

I can also tell you if you've been gone for a long time, they nerfed nails big time. They can still be worth it depending on you circumstances. But best gold farms now are either food or Legendary spheres.

AND, when you notice the achievement for hard mode bosses, it doesn't mean playing them on hard mode. Once you've defeated all six tower bosses, you unlock a "hard mode" version of them, but they can be completed with any world settings as I understand it. I've not completed that on my other save. I've not cleared the oil rig. and there are a couple others I'm missing I can't think of right now.

I gotta ask, what do you need the gold for?

Most of my gold is what I've collected from all the dead bad guys.
Although, I have got a couple Mau to farm items and gold from, when I don't need other things (Milk, Eggs, Wool, HQ Oil).

It's just, most people seem to say to buy bullets. Except my base generally can whip up a batch of them in minutes.
(I farm Sulphur outside the volcano Tower boss, now and then. With two furnaces, my Kindling Pals can quickly whip up 400 Charcoal in seconds, and 200 Refined Ingots in a few minutes. My Pals make 100 Gunpowder within a minute. And they make 100 Shotgun shells in about a minute or so.)
So, within 7 minutes, I've got 100+ shotgun shells stored for me to use when I need a refill.

Most of what the merchant sells is either useless schematics, or things I can already farm or make. (Why pay 150g for milk, when my cows make 2+ for free every five minutes?)

[Nicodemous52]

Originally posted by funewchie:

Originally posted by Nicodemous52:

I can also tell you if you've been gone for a long time, they nerfed nails big time. They can still be worth it depending on you circumstances. But best gold farms now are either food or Legendary spheres.

AND, when you notice the achievement for hard mode bosses, it doesn't mean playing them on hard mode. Once you've defeated all six tower bosses, you unlock a "hard mode" version of them, but they can be completed with any world settings as I understand it. I've not completed that on my other save. I've not cleared the oil rig. and there are a couple others I'm missing I can't think of right now.

I gotta ask, what do you need the gold for?

Most of my gold is what I've collected from all the dead bad guys.
Although, I have got a couple Mau to farm items and gold from, when I don't need other things (Milk, Eggs, Wool, HQ Oil).

It's just, most people seem to say to buy bullets. Except my base generally can whip up a batch of them in minutes.
(I farm Sulphur outside the volcano Tower boss, now and then. With two furnaces, my Kindling Pals can quickly whip up 400 Charcoal in seconds, and 200 Refined Ingots in a few minutes. My Pals make 100 Gunpowder within a minute. And they make 100 Shotgun shells in about a minute or so.)
So, within 7 minutes, I've got 100+ shotgun shells stored for me to use when I need a refill.


Most of what the merchant sells is either useless schematics, or things I can already farm or make. (Why pay 150g for milk, when my cows make 2+ for free every five minutes?)

I use it to buy ammo until I have enough resources to make it without much worry or thought. I do also supplement my cake ingredients because I tend to keep 4 or more breeding farms running at all times, on the main save building the army. I've not gotten to where I don't worry about them yet.

I actually just started another save. I made this one pretty easy because, I've restarted more than 20 times, I've done the struggle thing more than once.

I should add, On my newest save I've been running around with a makeshift handgun since like lvl 8, I still can't make ammo for it, I have to buy it. Just like I'll soon have a handgun, as soon as I can unlock a weapons bench, but I won't be able to make the ammo for a long time.

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by maestro:

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

So what is the complaint here? The game gives you custom difficulty setting. Is that not enough? Or do you feel the game should be easier, for you, without the shame of resorting to using those custom settings? Because it honestly sounds like this is a rant intended to reduce general difficulty for everyone.

The rant is mostly about how the "Normal" mode of the game is tuned to be way too difficult (at least early-game) and that the balance in general of the game just feels "off".

Sure, you can halve the damage taken by your character, but that feels like a kludge and could possibly cause balance problems later, esp since people in the thread are talking about how they end up being immortal in later armors for awhile.

I don't wanna have to be constantly fiddling with my world's difficulty settings to maintain an experience that feels fun and reasonable.

So that would be a yes. You want to adjust the game difficulty for everyone. Noted.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

So that would be a yes. You want to adjust the game difficulty for everyone. Noted.

Well, that, *and* I want it to be better balanced throughout the game.

Instead of early game being ludicrously hard and later game being ludicrously easy.

And don't forget if you want it harder, there's more space to the right of the slider than there is to the left of the sliders.

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by maestro:

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

So that would be a yes. You want to adjust the game difficulty for everyone. Noted.

Well, that, *and* I want it to be better balanced throughout the game.

Instead of early game being ludicrously hard and later game being ludicrously easy.

And don't forget if you want it harder, there's more space to the right of the slider than there is to the left of the sliders.

Well arnt you a special snowflake.
Didn't you just use this argument?

I don't wanna have to be constantly fiddling with my world's difficulty settings to maintain an experience that feels fun and reasonable.

Guess it's OK for everyone else to fiddle with the sliders, just not you.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

Originally posted by maestro:

Well, that, *and* I want it to be better balanced throughout the game.

Instead of early game being ludicrously hard and later game being ludicrously easy.

And don't forget if you want it harder, there's more space to the right of the slider than there is to the left of the sliders.

Well arnt you a special snowflake.
Didn't you just use this argument?

I don't wanna have to be constantly fiddling with my world's difficulty settings to maintain an experience that feels fun and reasonable.

Guess it's OK for everyone else to fiddle with the sliders, just not you.

Read it again.

"I don't want to have to be constantly fiddling"

If it were a "set it once and forget it", that would be awesome.

But it doesn't sound like that's going to be the case for me or anybody else.