Is it just me or is Hearts of Stone a lot harder than the main game? (spoilers)

[Janthis]

I meet the level requirements, but it seems that almost all the enemies you fight have been seriously buffed up. The level 34+ knights are drowners are hard, but manageable. But the boss fights - first the toad prince, then the mage, then Olgierd... what the hell happened? It's like the devs suddenly decided they just want to murder the player or something?

Also, my Geralt is focused on signs, which makes him very effective against regular enemies, but almost useless in boss fights as they all seem to be resistant/immune to magic. I guess I should have focused on swords...

(By the way, if you're just gonna reply to brag about how you finished the entire game on NG+, Death March difficulty on your first try with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back and it felt too easy, don't bother. I know there are a few of you out there.) :P

[Gerdruids]

sounds like you need to use a clearing potion and re evaluate your build. and fight tatics.
not saying I had no problems. I just tend to be more of a tactition when it comes to fights.( Military Mindset ) Use of flash bombs. to disable move in close kill quickly move out. as an example. not that I did that in those types of fights. I use a combo build. six sword skils. with three signs. and three alchemy with synergy as one skill adding full mutation slots. gives me 60% x 2 sword attack 60% sign increase and vitality boost of 900 points
with the decotions to add vitality on each strike the more I hit the longer I live. followed up with the other that does same with stamina I have the power for signs. hope that you find help from these suggestions..

[string28]

The boss fights seem harder.

[Maldevich]

Yup Hearts of Stone its much more harder. My build Defensive Tanker Reflect Queen, Full Mastercraft Ursine facing swarm of 2 Nekker nest. Im hitting them but it doestn had that much damage on them. Maybe because of i'm scaling the enemy lv on the options?

[Go0lden_Archer]

They hit harder, have more health (Just a bit), but their main difference is that you actually need to "know your enemy".

Toad - Yrden stops it for 3-4 hits. Otherwise 2-3 hits, jump back when it starts to jump and then "Rince'n'Repeat"

Caretaker - let him do his series of attacks which ends with him hitting ground and pulling his showel afterwards. At that point it's 5-6 hits easy (Fast ones). And ofc, during 'summoning phase" you need to kill as many spirits as possible, for him not to heal up.

Olgierd - unless attacking everyone at same time (Which requires different approach), you can counter-attack every single one of them. Or even better, during their "Red blade" attack, when they teleport to you, hit them in the last moment, which will cause them to stagger. After that it's 3 strong attacks.

I'm kinda bad at explaining tatcics, but all 3 of them are easy, if you know what you're doing. And yes, I've played both NG and NG+ on DM difficulty, but with oppened eyes :D

For comparisment, on NG+ I've killed Imlerith by just using Whirl, he didn't even drop his shield, just died.
And with Eredin, it was simply prolonged cuz he teleports from one corner to another, but same.
So yeah, bosses in both expansions are a bit harder strategy-wise.

P.S. Every of my plays I've focused on different sword+alchemy builds, so no idea what sings you can apply (Except for Yrden for Toad :D), as I never was really interested in using any except for Quen.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

I meet the level requirements, but it seems that almost all the enemies you fight have been seriously buffed up.

Yep, all the enemies in both expansions have been buffed up. Blood and Wine has even stronger enemies. Luckily there is no difficulty achievement related to expansions so just lower it. Also helps when you are at least 5 levels above the quest level.

[Janthis]

I guess I'll turn the difficulty down to Story and Sword for the moment. Bosses that can kill me in 4 hits while I have to hit them 50 times aren't my idea of fun. If I wanted that kind of fight, I'd play Dark Souls or something.

By the way, sign-focused build is actually pretty fun, it almost makes you feel like a mage. Using Griffin armor + runes + Petri's Philter before a battle means I can often take out an entire group of enemies with a couple of Ignis. It just doesn't work well against bosses. Yrden is still somewhat effective (and Quen of course) but you don't need a specialized build for that.

[Duncan]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

I guess I'll turn the difficulty down to Story and Sword for the moment. Bosses that can kill me in 4 hits while I have to hit them 50 times aren't my idea of fun. If I wanted that kind of fight, I'd play Dark Souls or something.

By the way, sign-focused build is actually pretty fun, it almost makes you feel like a mage. Using Griffin armor + runes + Petri's Philter before a battle means I can often take out an entire group of enemies with a couple of Ignis. It just doesn't work well against bosses. Yrden is still somewhat effective (and Quen of course) but you don't need a specialized build for that.

I've used signs + alchemy build. You dont need to focus solely on signs because as you can see if an enemy is immune to burning you are pretty much screwed. Having ~20 points in signs is more than enough to annihilate everything with igni, the igni magic is extremely unbalanced, either its "press a button and see everything die" or it has no effect like at all. Alchemy on the other hand gives you access to cluster bombs and increased toxicity that lets you use 2 decoctions at the same time (for example ekhidna that makes you restore 1/6 of your health on a single sign cast). The game is pretty easy even with buffed up stuff.