Difficulty Level - too hard or too easy?

[a.zasadny]

We are incredibly curious about your reception of the game, especially its difficulty level. If you can, share your thoughts with us. Is the game challenging enough? Or maybe it's too easy?

[BCS]

Originally posted by Keith:

Can someone tell how to gift a game. I selected the Steam (Select the recipient) dropdown in the shopping cart but that didn't work. Maybe you have to be someone's friend to gift a game? That would be a stupid prerequisite if so.

yes you have to be their friend
also +1 for early game battles being so difficult on regular for me to progress. It's Dogring giving me an issue.

[Toby!]

It's fun but kind of require a lot of farming...
Each journey only move the story ahead by a very tiny bit.

[difficulty]
Doesn't feel very easy. Reasons:
1. good builds requires time (sure), and bad builds are hard to avoid given the resource (3 berry re-roll is not practical for beginning)
2. good builds end too soon (bcz when you get it right, its very easy), and bad builds require you to struggle... a lot. I know you can keep survive but I do feel the urge to abandon the run (for fast story push and a quick better build)
3. character move speed is slow.

[hope]
1. allow more levels (so the run can continue after eclipse 1)
2. lower the cost of cards (I didn't find a easy way to increase energy🤔)
3. shops can provide a bit more options?

[overall]
Love the game. It has good mechanism (fun!) and great art work.
Just need a bit more polish on the number/value design :D

[Firellius]

Came back to this today to check out some of the new content. I have not taken a single run past the third encounter yet because I've been trying to get that dragon egg to work and having a dead party member for the first NINE combats is a terrible idea.

Best run went belly-up over an enemy that deals 1 unblockable damage every turn through the Acid debuff and at that point I was done.

This isn't fun anymore.

[BCS]

Refunded the game because the demo was fun and this isn't.

[Delrusant]

act 4 feels bad, you start to unlock more tamers and mystlings but they cant be used as basic fights have become medium, medium have become hard and only best combo enable to move on, reward dont follow increased difficulty of fights, meaning you can only play with new stuff in older act but act 4 need very specific teams.

act 3 started this trend,

it is not funny. new stuff is different not stronger and content gets harder so only few combos work
what is the use of 300% exhaust for 9 damage when basic enemies have 22 hp, medium 70, medium back row 16 and need to be killed quickly.
there is no roguelike mechanics that boost your start, so you start still weak. which lead to only few combo working for latter acts which is not funny

[Vod Bot]

I haven't played much since the beta so this will be based on the few things I've seen in one run through each act one and act two.
First off shield builds are still stupidly broken. Nothing can kill you and eventually you'll win the war of attrition. However it is incredible boring since you take a lot of time to kill enemies. Sometimes you end up spending five minutes, or more, in an encounter that you know you'll win, with zero skill expression.
Second, Terok, aka the golem dude, is just stupid. Taking damage buffs him to deal more damage. Due to the nature of the game and the disability to choose to not deal damage (your first mystling always attacks, more later on that) building up enough damage to chew through the insane amount of two hundred hp is a damage race you cannot really win. Furthermore every few turns this guy deals an aoe attack. While the first or second can maybe shielded, due to the ramping damage, he will sooner or later kill most of your mystlings in one hit. Incredible slow, boring and unfair fight and overall a reason to avoid elite combats all together.
Third off, you have a very limited amount of actions. You're pretty much limited to 1. activating your mystlings, 2.making them attack, 3. blocking and maybe, with some special mystlings, healing, stunning or drawing cards. Action 1 and 2 get denied if your mystling is stunned reducing your limited options even more. Due to the fact that mystlings ALWAYS attack, if in first position, you're severely limited in strategic planning. Sometimes dealing damage is the worst option you have and needs to be avoided. You are now forced to find a way to deal with the negative consequences of something that was a bad idea to begin with. Furthermore the limited amount of different actions drastically reduce the replayability, depth of the game and learning curve.
And last off deck building costs. Unless you're grabbing cards from a merchant, which are randomized and not always easily accessed, you NEED to buy cards after winning a battle. This wouldn't be so bad if you wouldn't need the same resource to buy artefacts that you need to evolve your mystlings. The cost for artefacts scales and skyrockets pretty quickly. So unless you're running some form of economy tamer or mystling you are heavily reduced in the cards you can pick up. For me this resulted in, ignore cards, try to get some good artifacts and occasionally buy a card to tie it all together, which shouldn't be the premise for a deck builder. This again leads to a limited amount of actions and resources usable in battle, which furthermore restricts skill expression.
Sadly I don't have anything good to say bout the balance, but I think that the listed points can be fixed. Shield builds, or rather the damage capabilities of defensive actions could be reduced and other means of dealing damage could be increased. Terok could loose most of the damage scaling or effectiveness of the aoe with a reduced amount of hp. Different resources and actions could be introduced, like burning, poisoning or moving enemies to increase depth and skill expression. Additionally a way to prevent your front mystling from attacking in a form of resource trade off, like getting half of it's power as strength in the next round, could help increase the strategic options. And last it should be possible to grab one free card after each battle, which would allow for some actual deck building.

[BCS]

I refunded this game over how stupid the elite fights are.