Huge difficulty spike at the Ancient Sanctuary? (no spoilers)

[Detective Costeau]

I've been getting by in the game fine up until this point- I'm not great at the block and parry timings, but been doing well enough to get by fine on the normal difficulty until now- and then I got to the Ancient Sanctuary, and I'm getting stomped into a mud puddle by every enemy encounter here.

I'm not too proud to turn the difficulty down if it comes to that, but the massive sudden spike in difficulty is making me wonder if I missed something important. The story seems like it wants me to go directly here from the last location, but I feel like I've missed three areas or so worth of character power from how hard every encounter suddenly is. Is there somewhere else I was supposed to go? Are you just supposed to run past enemies and not fight them in this area?

Or is this really just where the game takes the gloves off and you need to be able to reliably nail 5 parries every enemy turn to not die?

[Jason Eroge]

with out dodging and parry its gona be hard to even do anything, alot of mobs if you dont parry its pretty much instant death, gets harder as you progress more into the game, the difficulty there is ok? if it gets too hard prolly just need to grind some levels and get more passives

[Ratsplat]

I'm trying to remember which level the ancient sanctuary is.

[Ratsplat]

Okay, just remembered. Well, I think everyone is going to notice difficulty spikes at different places. The first one I noticed was in the sea area, fighting the Burgeon/Troupador/mime. What I'm finding is that, outside of learning to dodge/parry, is that you need to start paying attention to your builds. Weapon, skills, pictos, lumina. Even elemental weaknesses help immensely. The only downside is that it can take a while to set everything up, so try to make a good all rounder for each character. Once you do that (and grind a bit), you'll find that you can actually tank some hits.

And lastly, Explore EVERYWHERE. Even in places that are considered dangerous. Collect as many pictos as you can.

[Holy]

pretty sure i almost killed almost anything at that point during the first turn. Playing on normal difficulty.

[eeeechuta]

the build-making in this game puts a huge difficulty variance for players...

did you do the hidden arena before this zone? it's a massive power spike than potentially 8x your damage and EHP.

[Detective Costeau]

I did not. I'll have to see if I can find that, I'm guessing it's accessed from the world map somewhere nearby?

[eeeechuta]

yeah walk around it's colored yellow.
it's a fun zone too, you can experience fair parrying and a great feeling of progression.

[Zanna]

I'd say enemies there are quite a bit stronger than usual, even compared to what comes next the enemies there feel like a tier above the normal mobs you find in other areas.
That said, you shouldn't go from "i'm doing ok" to "i can't progress", so you either missed optional stuff on the world map or your build sucks and it reached a point where you gotta improve it.

When it comes to parrying, the timing is a bit "later" than you would expect compared to other games. Think like when the enemy weapon is ON you , not when it's about it hit.

[Mugiwara]

I can add a little to what has been already said. Fire attacks are your friend here. For the catapult guys damage their shoulders with "free shots". When they launch their lightning catapult watch their shoulders and dodge very shortly after they launch. For the guys with cannons it's almost the same except you want to dodge the moment you see the cannon on their shoulders flash.

Edit: I found Luna's skill that combined Fire & Ice useful (I forget the name) but it is an ice attack when used on a burning enemy gives her 4AP and an extra turn.

[Time]

Originally posted by Detective Costeau:

I've been getting by in the game fine up until this point- I'm not great at the block and parry timings, but been doing well enough to get by fine on the normal difficulty until now- and then I got to the Ancient Sanctuary, and I'm getting stomped into a mud puddle by every enemy encounter here.

I'm not too proud to turn the difficulty down if it comes to that, but the massive sudden spike in difficulty is making me wonder if I missed something important. The story seems like it wants me to go directly here from the last location, but I feel like I've missed three areas or so worth of character power from how hard every encounter suddenly is. Is there somewhere else I was supposed to go? Are you just supposed to run past enemies and not fight them in this area?

Or is this really just where the game takes the gloves off and you need to be able to reliably nail 5 parries every enemy turn to not die?

this is a real rpg not hand holdy bs for kids. go level up and explore, theres tons of powerups out there you don;t even see

[Zeev]

I am bad at difficult games and I am also playing on GeForce Now with 50-60 ping which gives me harder time to parry and dodge, yet I had a blast with this level, and had to restart just once at the end boss.

What I did, for my 10 hour playthrough (I just finished this area), is exploring every corner in the game, leveling up by fighting every mob I see, even if sometimes I go in circrles, because combat is fun and I am far from a fan of turn based games..

So my suggestion to you is to explore the game, it has rewards behind every corner (loot), take your time, and hopefully you will have easier time.

Edit: Take note that mobs can also drop better version of weapons and your weapon will be automatically upgraded so make sure you fight as much mobs on your way as possible, its fun and rewarding. I found at least twice mod upgrades when defeating standing or patroling mobs in the big map (not dungeons).

Good luck.

[The HR Department]

I managed to get through the ancient sanctuary by avoiding fights with those annoying floating white thing enemies that have a projectile cast that I just couldn't get the hang of even dodging. The shielded up big swordy gals, were a pain to deal with until I unlocked the ability to just remove all of the shields in one hit, and they're also quite easy to get parry retaliations on, too.