FIX the Kraken PLEASE

[Riecheck]

I have almost 700 hours played on this game and I absolutely love it. I've been playing since 2015.

Am currently on a campaign that is on day 432 and have completed every Ambition except 8k Reputation and Kill a Kraken.

Fought the Kraken about 10 times now. Have researched and attempted multiple different approaches with no success. Came prepared with almost fully equipped unique items, Goblin Trophy, Acid Flasks, Polearms, Light Armor, Recover perks, Goblin Poisons, Second Wind Potions but don't have indomitable perk.

There's too many RNG based things working against you and too many guaranteed things working for the Kraken.

Random map layouts
Random chance to free brother from being wrapped up
Random chance to hit

Guaranteed to be wrapped up
Guaranteed to be eaten
Guaranteed to be in a swamp

Found the best way to fight the Kraken tentacles is to save scum until your brothers are all on land. Anything where you have to save scum to have a chance is poor design. You guys have fixed several of these save scum problems before by having fixed attribute rolls instead of "?" random ones, allowing "try outs" on recruits and also having fixed unique drops from locations instead of random each time.

Have a fixed map layout to even the playing field where you brothers start on land but have to traverse swamp to get to the Kraken.
Allow ranged brothers to try and shoot the tentacles to free brothers from afar.
Give the wrap up ability from the tentacles a chance to fail based on Melee Defense.
Reduce the fatigue build up of the free brother ability just on Kraken fight.
Increase the possibility of tentacle attacking instead of wrapping up but remove the bleed.

I could probably come up with some other things but I'm too fatigued myself from those damn attempts.

[Abel]

Yep, I must agree there. This fight is just not balanced. You should be able to win it after 200 days though. Melee Skill and Pathfinder are a must to overcome the difficulties you listed.

Your suggestions are interesting and could make for better balance.
As it is now, given that I don't play such long campaigns anymore, I'll probably not do this fight again until its conditions are improved. Also, the fetch x trophies quests are annoying and unnecessary.

[Doomich]

The only thing that needs to be done is to allow the grabbed brother to free himself before the tentacle takes him away.

[Riecheck]

@Doomich You can already have the brother that's been wrapped up attempt to free himself so not sure what you're getting at.

@Abel Yea, I forgot to list Pathfinder but I have that on 9 out of 12 brothers and all of them are lvl 16+ with 90+ on front line with no less than 75+ on everyone else except my 2 dedicated archers.
I actually enjoyed the fetching pre-quests for the Kraken but don't mind either way.

What I don't like is how the Watermill quest is tied to beating the Kraken... That should be it's own quest-line with the Fallen Dead or something

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Riecheck:

@Doomich You can already have the brother that's been wrapped up attempt to free himself so not sure what you're getting at.

@Abel Yea, I forgot to list Pathfinder but I have that on 9 out of 12 brothers and all of them are lvl 16+ with 90+ on front line with no less than 75+ on everyone else except my 2 dedicated archers.
I actually enjoyed the fetching pre-quests for the Kraken but don't mind either way.

What I don't like is how the Watermill quest is tied to beating the Kraken... That should be it's own quest-line with the Fallen Dead or something

The issue/challenge is that the brother gets moved before he can free himself, so somebody else has to free him or else he inevitably progresses to the kraken even with pathfinder. Unless the tentacles decide to grab somebody else, but they don't. That was my impression at least but only observed it once given I didn't reload to win.

[Chad 1999]

Yeah kraken is no fun nor balanced, it's far more a problem than the alps.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Provencal le Gaulois:

Yeah kraken is no fun nor balanced, it's far more a problem than the alps.

It's fun. I am just concerned that some starting positions might be unwinnable.

[Carnwulf]

I feel the same about the Kraken. I got overwhelmed by the Kraken without even reducing its health significantly. Alps and Kraken so far are 100% "Have to Avoid" enemies for me.

[gazomierz]

I'll derail a bit, if I may.

There is whole category of encounters in this game that feels that way. It started with monolith. That was the first fight that required "cheesing" from the player. And this philosophy of design followed to kraken, the dead guy I can't remember the name of, and in lesser extent shows in alps and hexen. Those enemies/encounters are just poorly designed (in comparison to earlier content) and not fun (at least for me).

It stops being about playing the game and turns into finding exploiative ways of beating some speciic enemy. For me it's completly immersion breaking. That's mostly why I haven't really played this game for a long time, outside of testing periods.

And what bothers me is that we're getting second DLC before issues with Beasts&Exploration are fixed. And in that dlc already 1/3 of content feels lazy or broken. For me it's a bit like they want to push new content out and quality of said content is suffering because of that.

I used to get feeling of great dedication and vision that drived this game, and devs by connection. That feeling is now kinda lost on me. But maybe it's just me.

Just a thought.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by gazomierz:

I'll derail a bit, if I may.

There is whole category of encounters in this game that feels that way. It started with monolith. That was the first fight that required "cheesing" from the player. And this philosophy of design followed to kraken, the dead guy I can't remember the name of, and in lesser extent shows in alps and hexen. Those enemies/encounters are just poorly designed (in comparison to earlier content) and not fun (at least for me).

It stops being about playing the game and turns into finding exploiative ways of beating some speciic enemy. For me it's completly immersion breaking. That's mostly why I haven't really played this game for a long time, outside of testing periods.

And what bothers me is that we're getting second DLC before issues with Beasts&Exploration are fixed. And in that dlc already 1/3 of content feels lazy or broken. For me it's a bit like they want to push new content out and quality of said content is suffering because of that.

I used to get feeling of great dedication and vision that drived this game, and devs by connection. That feeling is now kinda lost on me. But maybe it's just me.

Just a thought.

The black monolith never required cheesing. People just used cheesing to compensate for the fact that they didn't have the patience (or skills) to get a team good enough to take it in one go.

The DLC is pretty good, frankly, but that doesn't mean there aren't things to optimize. An important flaw to be wary of is situations in which the player is screwed no matter what they do. That's why I argued for there to be a way to retreat from the new alps (which I like), and why I have concerns about bad starting positions for the kraken.

[turtle225]

I haven't fought the Kraken but complaining that it is hard doesn't make sense. It is a boss level optional endgame fight. It should be hard.

My only issue with it is how much swamp will impact your chances of success. I think a fixed map would be boring but if they made it so that whatever algorithm generates swamp maps was tweaked slightly for the kraken fight to feature more of the non-swamp tiles then it should be fine.

[gazomierz]

@Tephros83

Because in order to get squad required to beat monolith without cheesing took ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of savescumming recruits (when that was possible), insane amount of fishing for recruits or hell lot of grinding. Or some combination of the above.

That's why for me it falls into same category as kraken. Those encounters can't really be expected to be beaten with regular band. You have to build for them, either in demigods or very specific builds. It stands in contradiction to the whole "roll with what you get" idea behind the game. And that's my main issue.

Game can't decide if it wants to encourage ironman and be rogue-like in that sense or if it wants to be puzzle-like specific-goal-build oriented strategy.

For me early and mid game are great. That's where it feels authentic and the whole idea of "roll with what you get" works great and is strongly emphasized. That's the fun part of the game. In late game it's all lost. Late game is nothing but tedious and boring grind. Especially since once you have your band established nothing in the game can offer you a challenge, except for those select few encounters.

I've done one long run latetly, to about day 350. And it reminded me why I switched to short, mostly one crisis, runs. It only strenghten my opinion on this. After certain point it feels like I'm playing entirely different game all of a sudden.

[Abel]

Those are interesting points.
The encounters you cited are obviously puzzle-like in nature and cannot be consistently beaten without a proper strategy. Whereas, yes, Brigands and most Beasts (and all the early to mid game encounters) for example leave a good margin for inefficiency (making with what you have and like).

Turtle, there's a difference between difficulty and balance.
The Black Monolith is hard but balanced. It's definitely possible to destroy it before day 150, even with standard recruits, provided you use optimized builds and strategy.
For the Kraken, it doesn't matter. If most of your characters don't have very high Melee Skill, you'll never go past the first phase. It's just not doable without several Veteran levels.
All the other late game challenges are doable with a level 11 party. The Witch Hut can be cleared even earlier.

And there are better ways to satisfy players that want to play the very late game. Scaling enemy power and size further, for starters, would be better than just locking some content for 200+ days campaigns.
Scaling would also resolve the problem gazomierz points out, the lack of challenge after the first crisis.

[Flharfh]

Essentially requiring a specific build/perks, like Kraken and pathfinder, is proof that the fight is poorly designed or poorly balanced. You shouldn't have to min-max and design a party a specific way just for one fight. Good design means there are multiple ways to win, especially for a game that prides itself on there being many ways to build a bro and not having any "bad" perks.

I also think the barrier to entry for these end game fights is too high - how many players even make it to day 300 on any playthrough? Catering to the tiny minority of hardcore players is typically a mistake, in my opinion.

The problem with Alps is moreso that the new design is really tedious than that it's difficult, in my opinion.

*Edit - according to the Steam achievements, 11% of players have made it to day 100 at least once, 1.7% have made it to day 365, and .2% have killed a Kraken.

[turtle225]

I haven't fought the Kraken so I can't really comment more on it than I already have.

The other end game fights are fine though. You don't need a team of gods to beat the Monolith or the rest and you don't need to play a 300 day campaign either.

The game is already "won" by the time the first crisis is over. Without these challenges to look forward to there would be no point in continuing.

These fights are not designed to be beaten by the average player. The average player is getting killed by Brigand Marksman because they don't understand how the game works.

Neutering these fights would be a mistake.

[gazomierz]

I'm sure there are ppl that find grinding their mercs to lvl40+ fun. For me it just isn't. That's not what get me hooked on the game and not what I expected with further development. I also think that just doesn't fit to the original idea behind the game. Imho that disparity is clearly seen. And I just don't get why this switch in design occurred.

I also want to make clear that I'm actually quite happy that game is getting another DLC. I like the idea of band origins. I like what they teased us with so far. But, honestly, I'd prefer if they would resolve issues with B&E first. Alps and hexen are just annoying. Kraken I have no incentive to fght knowing how it works. Crafting is still very restrictive and you can't really enjoy it before late game (so in my case almost never). New weapons except one being pretty much pointless.

There's also another issue. Taking current trends in the industry into account I can't shrug off feeling of them just going for easy (or at least easier) money. Imho about 1/3 of B&E content doesn't come close to original game in terms of quality and thought put to it. Or at least that's how it feels for me. If this continues to upcoming DLC I will be very disappointed. It's long way to PDX style dlcs where half of content should be offered with game on launch. But it somewhat looks like a step in such direction.

Also, why haven't we been teased with anything about their new game? What's up with that? It's been over a year if I'm not mistaken. I, for one, was stronly interested in that one. As generally I prefer sf settings. They're usually much more creative than fantasy ones, which mostly are just copies of eachother with minor cosmetic differences. It's like ppl are scared to be creative when it comes to fantasy.

Ehh.... I'm mostly just rambling today. Just some random nonsense :)