Game is too hard when you reach the Watch

[lilahkat]

I admit I am not a great player but I was enjoying playing mostly on easy or medium game play but as soon as I reached the Watch - game play in the vaults is uneven. The first level in the vault is reasonably difficult but not impossible. When you are at the second level in the vault the dark monsters dog pile you and there is no strategy I can find to defeat the monsters. They either don't come far enough into areas visible from your 'nest' (I tend to use Sniper style tactics when I am using gunfire games) or they sit and stay just outside of range and when you move to reach them they dog pile you instantly.

I am not the sort of person who likes to play with others you team play won't interest me.

If all the game play that is available to an basic player is crafting and building houses while killing animals ... it's boring as heck. By the time I was reaching the Watch, I was desperate for something else to do. It just feels like a sup'd up Minecraft with prettier graphics which was boring as heck to me (Minecraft that is.). I'd have preferred more equipment earlier on and less house parts.

My equipment is too basic to be decent and it's too difficult to get T3 essence in any amount to buy something decent - I can't even figure out how to make the newer knife that I got the plans for in spite of setting up three separate workbenches.

Disappointed - 300+ hours in and contemplating quitting.

[KaijuSoul]

300+ hours "im bored, its repetitive, i cant do anything"

You put 300 hours in and reached the watch. Its an early access game. youre not bored because of the game, youre bored and complaining cause you over-consumed an early access title that is slim on endgame content especially. This wasnt the games fault.

[Dave Higgins]

Having played through solo myself, I know what you mean about the sudden jump in difficulty between playing through the realms and doing a vault with only the equipment that was great up until them.

Have you acquired the Vault card recipe yet? It's not the easiest thing to craft the required materials but they are created in reasonably sizeable stacks so once you've done it you can craft quite a few Vault cards before having to redo it. That would let you create Easy vaults from your own portals rather than the default ones accessed from the Watch.

For essence gathering, the Treasury Eminent minor card can help speed it up. Essence rewards also scale based on difficulty, so if it's mostly being swarmed that you are struggling with, then creating a Hard Ascended realm and only going to Points of Interest that aren't big fights might work for you.

[stretch]

There are a lot of things you should be doing but I honestly struggle to comprehend how you got to 300 hours without finding them all already. Most that finished everything did it in 100 or less. You have burnt out flogging the first 10 hours of the game to death. Oh well. Maybe I can help or maybe not.

So for combat - get quake, put it on your melee weapon and learn how to activate it. Once you have that figured out you can walk into groups of enemies and quake will keep them off balance so nothing can melee you. You will need to watch out for ranged attack only but you can use quake on the melee and then deal with the ranged before the melee recover and then head back to them. It's very simple. Ranged is too slow for group encounters early on and really I don't know if it ever gets feasible. Might do. I am not going to explain every detail about getting quake and all that but it's a charm or enchantment or whatever that is applied to your weapon and cast using stamina so you need to build your gear with that in mind. Once you master it you will rarely take damage so you can probably craft gear that has a bit less hp and a bit more stamina. Heaps of people making 3000hp gear and have 100 stamina must need all that hp because they can't fight very well with no stamina. Try to balance things out a bit and you should do fine.

If you really struggle for essence then you need to get through the watch missions to unlock the higher tier realms. Just suck up the grouping to do that bit. It's only 100 difficulty and if you can latch onto the back of a group going through you might not even have to do much at all. The bosses in there can be troublesome to solo on occasion depending which one you do.
Once you can create top tier realms, make ones at the highest difficulty and farm all the non combat PoI's. It's a painful way to do it but it rewards a lot more than lower difficulty ones. The ideal way is to farm the Fae Towers but the combat in a 220 version is going to be too tough for a while at least.

If you simply insist on doing ranged then have you considered building yourself little towers near the encounters you want and/or setting yourself up somewhere they cannot reach you? A platform on the side of a hill? You can build almost anywhere. You mention your nest and sniper set up but are you finding locations or making them?

Your problem with crafting recipes might well be the usual one. The augment system. Items require you to have very specific augments applied to the bench and they have a limited number of slots. You need to move different augments in and out of range of the workbench to apply the augments you actually need. The guide book or glossary or maybe even the item recipe tell you what augment is needed. It's a horrid system. The slot above the bench should show what augments are currently applied to it. You just have to juggle things to get the ones you need.
If this is not your problem then I can't think what you could be getting stuck on. Most people with problems just need to figure out the augment system so fingers crossed that's your problem.

I have not played since the patch. I don't know if other than crafting stats it changed anything a great deal or not. I also only solo so I don't know for sure if I could even log in and help you in some way. If you really struggle then just friend me here and I will attempt to help you in game but I am in Australia so our time zones might make timing awkward. I really should go back on and redo all my gear with the new system so I can do that while we sort out your problems. Neither of us really wants to group but two of us shouldn't be too painful. Get you some gear and such to get you over the hump so you can farm your own essences easier.

[RiChuF]

Originally posted by lilahkat:

I admit I am not a great player but I was enjoying playing mostly on easy or medium game play but as soon as I reached the Watch - game play in the vaults is uneven. The first level in the vault is reasonably difficult but not impossible. When you are at the second level in the vault the dark monsters dog pile you and there is no strategy I can find to defeat the monsters. They either don't come far enough into areas visible from your 'nest' (I tend to use Sniper style tactics when I am using gunfire games) or they sit and stay just outside of range and when you move to reach them they dog pile you instantly.

I am not the sort of person who likes to play with others you team play won't interest me.

If all the game play that is available to an basic player is crafting and building houses while killing animals ... it's boring as heck. By the time I was reaching the Watch, I was desperate for something else to do. It just feels like a sup'd up Minecraft with prettier graphics which was boring as heck to me (Minecraft that is.). I'd have preferred more equipment earlier on and less house parts.

My equipment is too basic to be decent and it's too difficult to get T3 essence in any amount to buy something decent - I can't even figure out how to make the newer knife that I got the plans for in spite of setting up three separate workbenches.

Disappointed - 300+ hours in and contemplating quitting.

well ya gunna have to either
learn to play with others
or open your own vault portal at ya home realm and stick it on easy
you could also skip the watch vaults and do the Ascended realms till you get enuff t3 essence to get gear to do the vaults

[JimmyTheSaltyMelon]

Hay man you need to rework your gear and upgrade it , + im running the watch vaults at lest the sun god vault by my self no issue, if you like i can run you through hit me up with a time to meet on the nightngale discord an d ill help you out

[Foxglovez]

Since the patch everything has changed regarding gear/food. You are not only going to have to build way more for stamina but must upgrade your stam regen. A pool of stam is worthless if it can't be refilled. Think Valheim. Devs just love their stam regen requirements in survival games. They also have upgraded and changed some tools/weapons so this patch may be of help to you in building better quality gear. Enchantments and spells are going to be really important as a part of the whole as stretch noted though he could have been a bit kinder. lol

At some point though you may have reached the end of what this game has to offer you as a solo player at your skill level. If you have limited strategy skills then you will feel it's the game's fault but it's probably not. We solos are a bit of the red-headed-step-children in some of these survival games. You might take some time and go play Valheim and really learn how to fight (using that as example of another EA game that is similar but more fleshed out), get more confidence in your playing and learn more skills that will help you with this game. Gotta remember that these games are not "forever" games and we only have a small part of it open during EA. Just play till you get to the end for you and come back later, or not. You may need to just get gud as they say to progress further.

[muchdebate]

Originally posted by stretch:

There are a lot of things you should be doing but I honestly struggle to comprehend how you got to 300 hours without finding them all already. Most that finished everything did it in 100 or less.

Not everyone plays like you do.

I have 370+ hours in and am not yet at the watch; haven't done many of the main quests, and have only barely explored the gloom and hunt areas (basically enough to buy patterns).