A couple of questions about tactician mode...

[geøstigma]

Hey!

I've played the D:OS EE and finished the game on normal difficulty in co-op with my gf. The game was challenging enough at first but later on we became pretty much indestructible (especially Madora, hehe).

So we went into the D:OS 2 looking for a bit more challenging experience. What we got was something completely different.

20+ hours into the game an we just sneaked our way into the fort where we have to save the leader of the Seekers. It turns out he saved us while my gf was kiting the enemy and allowing him to deal with the bunch of them. This is the part where we realized that we either:

1. have no idea what we're doing;
   
2. are severely underpowered;
   
3. completely messed up our character creation;
   
4. encountered some bugs.

Now the thing is, we've already played D:OS as I've mentioned and the games are pretty much identical and the only notable change is the armor system so the #1 is kind of out of the question.
As for the #2, our enemies are of the same level so that can't really be it either (can it?).
#3 is where my money's at but then again, we both picked premade classes and proceeded with increasing the main attributes (END / STR for my tanky inquisitor and FIN for her archer) and are rolling with default Fane and Lohse.
#4 is highly unlikely and I don't even consider it possible given the fact that the game is very polished but one can never be 100% certain.

So, the problem is that we can't do♥♥♥♥♥♥in combat. Even if we manage to win, it's always a Pyrrhic victory where we barely make it out, spend a potion or two and a couple of scrolls to resurrect the fallen party members afterwards which became rather hard to do if not impossible as we are out of gold at this point as well as out of goods to sell (and my character even has 1 skill @ bartering).
It seems rather unfair to be so hard and tedious to bring the opponents armor down when they can pretty much take all of our own (both physical and magical) in just 1 hit/shot with the exception of our tank who takes 2 to 3 hits, lol

So what I'm asking is:
Is this normal experience for tactician mode? Does it get a wee-bit easier later on once we remove our collars? Are we missing some crucial gamplay element and should we focus more heavily on defense and armor of our own characters?
I've read some people saying that quicksaving and encounter replaying is inevitable and that it will be a big part of tactician mode which is not really something I would like it to be. I want it to be more dynamic, more situational where we can make a single mistake which consequences
we will get to feel but not get completely annihilated because we accidentally misclicked.

Also, is there challenge to be had on normal mode or is it just a walk in the park that makes the game rather easy and accessible to anyone because that's not what we want either?
Last but not least, should we use any mods to make the game challenging but fair at the same time?

Thanks in advance!

[paralistalon]

I feel like the game did get easier- probably because I loaded up all my characters with skills and learned how to best keep the enemies stunlocked. At a certain point, you can also completely re-spec your characters, which really helps as you discover which builds kind of suck. But some of the boss battles can be nightmarish.

[Thicc Mittens]

That's probably normal experience for Tactician difficulty if it's your first time playing the game. There's a deceptively steep learning curve, even if you've played through DOS1. I say deceptive, because the basic mechanics are easy enough to understand - it's not like armour hitpoint bars or height advantages are especially complicated - so you'll find yourself feeling like you know how it all works yet you'll still be struggling.

However, at least in my experience, as you play you'll start to pick up on a lot of stuff (a lot of it kinda intuitive, so difficult to explain beyond "positioning is important" or "focus on removing enemies from the fight") and it'll start to get easier. I did my first playthrough on Classic and it was challenging enough for the first 40-60% of the game but as it went on it got easier and easier, partly due to learning the game, but also just due to the power creep as your characters get to the high levels and amass wealth and loot. The learning part is still a significant factor though - my 2nd playthrough on Tactician was actually easier for me than my Classic run despite the difficulty hike because I had a much better idea of what to do and was much better at judging encounters, positioning, tactics, etc.

Also the first Act is arguably the hardest part of the game as you have fewer skills (so less tools to deal with any given situation) and unless you're thieving from the shopkeeping population you're gonna be relying on the RNG for gear upgrades - and similar-level gear makes a huge difference.

If it helps, a couple of small tips for Act 1:

You mention running out of healing potions. Consider investing in the 5 star diner talent (you can respec out of it later). In the early game healing potions are somewhat scarce, especially if you're struggling with the combat and needing to drink them like water. However, fish and meat are pretty common and you can easily cook those into the "Dinner" item (which despite being the most basic, is the best food item imo), which provides a 15% heal for 1 AP in combat. That's ok(ish) as an emergency backup on a normal character - you'll need to spend most of your turn eating to get any real healing from it - but with 5 star diner that becomes a 30% heal which gives pretty significant chunk of healing. It's still not as good as a level-appropriate healing potion, but they're *much* easier and cheaper to acquire and 1-2 AP of eating will still keep you upright in most situations.

Tip 2 is to craft new gear when you level up. Crafted weapons and armour just have basic stats, no fancy bonuses, so they're easy to dismiss as not worth it. However, you'll get an item that is the same level you are when you do the crafting (which is why I say do it at levelup), so even without the fancy bonuses there's a good chance it'll be an upgrade to armour or damage values over whatever you've looted so far, and that'll probably be more significant than the 5% damage boost from a +1 str or a 10% poison resistance on an item 3 levels below you. Note that for armour crafting there's usually a shortage of needle and thread (thread especially), but the blacksmith trader sells one of each and restocks whenever you level up.


Overall, I'm not sure whether to suggest to you to drop to Classic or not. I'd say it's definitely still a challenge if it's your first time with the game, and there's some pretty rough encounters even there, but my experience with it was similar to your experience (and mine) with DOS1 - it starts out challenging enough, but as it goes on it gets a lot easier as your characters become borderline invincible. Tactician though, you really need to know the game for it not to be an uphill slog.

[geøstigma]

Thanks for the reply guys.

Biowraith, thank you for the detailed reply and especially for pointing out these facts about the gear crafting. I believe I'll be fine now that you've pointed out that crafted gear is always my level since the gear that I have is mostly junk items with 1-2 greens and some rather cool unique items that my gf dug out on the beach with the salamanders which are all below my level. I'll give it another try now that I know about this.

[Thicc Mittens]

I should probably mention that you can only craft chest armour pieces (no hats or gloves etc), so it's not a cure-all for being poorly geared, but it can let you take an extra hit or so in combat, which is sometimes all you need.

Also if you don't already have it, the Lucky Charm Civic skill provides a noticeable increase in rng loot - it has a chance to proc on every container you open, so it becomes worth checking all those crappy barrels and boxes that only usually have 5 gold or an apple or something as they'll now have a chance to spawn a green or better armour/weapon with that skill (it works party-wide now too!). I usually have one character pour all their Civic points into it. And Thievery can help even more; 2-3 points will give you a big influx of skillbooks and gear by robbing all the vendor NPCs in Fort Joy, though some people consider it a bit cheesy if you're RPing as heroes.

Good luck!

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by geøstigma:

Is this normal experience for tactician mode?

Not uncommon. The beginning of the game in Fort Joy is brutal on Tactician and unless you are a god-tier turn based tactical player you are going to know you're in a game and a half. I had a hell of a job getting through Fort Joy.

After Act 1 it gets easier as you power up and get constant access to a respec mirror that allowws you to tweak your builds as you want.

Originally posted by geøstigma:

Are we missing some crucial gamplay element and should we focus more heavily on defense and armor of our own characters?

On Tactician enemies at the same level have 2-3x your armour and do 2x+ damage per hit you do at this stage of the game (in fact for most of then game). The AI is also suped up on Tactician and is vindictively remorseless in doing exactly what you would prefer it not to do in combat.

The main solution to this is to build you characters to maximise damage output as a priority, next to equip the best possible weapons you can find/buy and third to invest in the best armour you can afford after you've bought your weapons for that level. You cannot hope to survive for very long if you do not kill the enemy fast, so tanky builds are sub-optimal compared to out and out damage dealers.

You gotta kill them before they kill you bascially and it helps enourmously if you can strip their armour so you can CC them as this significantly reduces the amount of damage you take buying you time. Since stripping armour is effected by directly damaging it it follows that raw damage output is overwhelmingly the most important thing in this game. In DOS 1 you could CC enemies turn 1. Here you can't and this is a big cxhange tactically.

Therefore paying close attention to how weapon damage output and ability damage/CC/buff/heal scaling works is essential. If you are unsure what I mean by this you need to look it up or ask some specific questions here.

The other question to ask is how much you use right-click on all the enemies to ascertain their stats, resistances and abilities? In battle this can be vital information.

Originally posted by geøstigma:

I've read some people saying that quicksaving and encounter replaying is inevitable and that it will be a big part of tactician mode which is not really something I would like it to be. I want it to be more dynamic, more situational where we can make a single mistake which consequences
we will get to feel but not get completely annihilated because we accidentally misclicked.

Yes, it is true that a lot of encounters are set piece challenges desinged so that if you just walk in swinging you will almost certainly get slaughtered. This is why a lot of people will have talked about reloading etc. One way to play is to do just that: wade in to find out what the lie of the land is, then reload and make a battle plan in the light of 20/20 hindsight.

However you don't have to play like that if you have the patience and the desire not to.

These encounteres have been lovingly and carefully designed. If you scout around an encounter area in sneak mode and pay attention to the terrain an how you (or the enemy) might use it to advantage you can usually discover at least as much ionformation as if you had triggered the encounter prematurely just for a look see and reloaded. With the exception of a few ambush encounters the clues as to how to tackle them are all there. And even the ambushes are mostly telegraphed if you think to listen and to look first.

Secondly the game does not expect you to play by the Queensbury Rules on Tactician. Walking up saying "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you, sir, en guarde!" is not an optimal strategy. Knights in shining armour need not apply. You should use every dirty rotten trick in the book to turn the odds in your favour by any means necessary. There are *always* opportunities to do this, usually many more than one. Doing the scouting and coming up with the outstandingly darstadly plan is what's fun about it :)

Originally posted by geøstigma:

Also, is there challenge to be had on normal mode or is it just a walk in the park that makes the game rather easy and accessible to anyone because that's not what we want either?
Last but not least, should we use any mods to make the game challenging but fair at the same time?

As you've come this far I advise persisting, I don't think you'll regret it. The game does get easier as you progress and there is a danger that starting again on Classic you'd find mid-game onwards too easy now.

I would suggest asking for specific advice on you builds and also about some of the more difficult encounteres you're having trouble with, or anything lese you're getting stuck on. Ther will be an answer.

Finally if you want some tips on how it's done on Tactician I would watch this vid of the Griff battle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAf8peMGXxg&index=8&list=PLkr09O8z61-oqb5pPiHKfKr3qGKUxjIJI

This dude, Xavier, is one of if not the best XCOM players in the world. Those skills are of course directly transferable to DOS, and this IMO is approaching a master class in early game DOS2 Tactician combat.

[geøstigma]

Posting here definitely wasn't a mistake. Thanks for the tips bro, I sure feel a lot more motivated to keep playing on the difficulty that I've chosen.

P.S. Watching Griff fight makes me realize how hard that one actually is and at the same time makes me wonder how the heck was I able to win that in the first place :)

[Thicc Mittens]

The Griff fight is also a classic example of the impact positioning can make.

Starting down in the kitchen area makes for a bit of a rough fight - you're surrounded, sat right next to an oil barrel that will almost certainly get exploded on you, and 1-3 enemies (depending where they're wandering when combat starts) has a height and cover advantage; see how he was being attacked by Butter but couldn't get line of sight back to her. It's certainly winnable that way, as the video shows, but it can also go quite a bit more smoothly:

If you know the fight is coming (or see that's the way the conversation is going) you can park your party up top with Butter, giving your side the height advantage over nearly all of the enemies and taking hers away. Gum up the stairs with oil and ice (optionally have a tanky character body blocking at the top) and the enemy wastes a bunch of turns trying to reach you while you snipe/blast them from above... and if someone does reach you, you can teleport them back down again (or just teleport Butter down right at the start, removing her contribution for a while). The stairs acts as a bottleneck forcing them to bunch up a bit so you can catch more of them with AoE.

It all works to greatly reduce the damage coming your way as they have to waste AP on closing the gap (and with ice, entire turns lost falling over) while you soften them up and possibly focus fire some of them out of the fight entirely. By the time they manage to get in a position to deal any real damage they'll likely have little armour left making them vulnerable to 'hard' crowd control effects like shock and knockdown.

Added bonus if you diplomacy with Butter beforehand and she ends up fighting on your side instead of Griff's

[geøstigma]

The fight is actually so good and the streamer commenting on every move he made actually made me sit through the entire thing.

I'm no casual by any means but I've never really played many cRPG or strategy games whatsoever and hearing someone who is more acustomed to these tacticize and just commenting on their every move filling me in on the thought process really broadens my horizons.

F*ck, now I can't wait to get back home and resume my adventure...

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Biowraith:

If you know the fight is coming (or see that's the way the conversation is going) you can park your party up top with Butter, giving your side the height advantage over nearly all of the enemies and taking hers away.

That's a very important observation often forgoten in advice posts and not at all obvious in-game when you start.

It's not just in this fight, in many encounters, if you split up your party before engaging in a NPC conversation that looks like it might go south, at any stage you can switch characters leaving the charcter in diaolog on pause so to speak and freely position your other three characters in the most favourable positions before selecting the dialog option that looks like it's going to light the blue touch paper.

In fact later game your chatcters will have all sorts of abilities enabling the dialog charcter to either go invisible of jump considerable distances away and escape, making it possible to turn such encounteres into dastardly ambushes by hiding your other three characters.

What I was saying about Queensbury Rules and knights in shining armour :)

[Drackmore]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Secondly the game does not expect you to play by the Queensbury Rules on Tactician. Walking up saying "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you, sir, en guarde!" is not an optimal strategy. Knights in shining armour need not apply. You should use every dirty rotten trick in the book to turn the odds in your favour by any means necessary. There are *always* opportunities to do this, usually many more than one. Doing the scouting and coming up with the outstandingly darstadly plan is what's fun about it :)

Basically, sit up on top of a ridge and spam Summon Incarnate. All else fails, find a box, fill it with TONS of oil and ooze barrels, then teleport it on someone's head. And if you're not a forgetful person feel free to leave a teleport prism away from the combat so you can pop back, refresh all your cooldowns and come in swinging hard.

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

In fact later game your chatcters will have all sorts of abilities enabling the dialog charcter to either go invisible of jump considerable distances away and escape, making it possible to turn such encounteres into dastardly ambushes by hiding your other three characters.

Lets not forget having someone sneak behind your enemies while you're talking to them and pickpocketing those really nice potions they just so love to spam.

[Roger]

I'm playing through the game on tactician for the first time right now and while I don't have a whole lot to add that hasn't been said already, I will say that having chameleon cloak and a handful of invisibility potions on both of my characters has helped out a ton. It's something you might not really have the option to do until you get a bit father in the game, but there are some useful things you can do with invisibility.

If you both stealth at the end of your turn, most enemies will just end their turn, or spend it buffing or something. Then you can just delay (make sure to delay, not end) your next turn, so you go last in the order for that turn, the enemies usually all end their turn again. Basically gives you a free turn while they essentially lose 2 turns. You can also just hang out invisible to buy time while you wait for your cooldowns if you have to. Or even cloak and run away.

Keep in mind it doesn't always work, I've had a few times where they'll cast rain or try to whirlwind and take me out of stealth, but for the most part that works

Also, I'd recommend getting a decent amount of points into wits. Having high initiave on tactician is very important. If you get to go before your enemies, it helps stop you from getting CC chained and lets you set up the battle to go the way you want it to.

The start of the game is absolutely the hardest part to get through on tactician. As you progress in the game, you'll get a lot more CC abilities as well as damage and general utlity that make fights much more easy to handle. I'm just starting Act 4 in my game and it's almost *too* easy at this point. I'm sure that has more to do with me doing lone wolf than playing on tactician though.

[Energist]

Originally posted by geøstigma:

Hey!

I've played the D:OS EE and finished the game on normal difficulty in co-op with my gf. The game was challenging enough at first but later on we became pretty much indestructible (especially Madora, hehe).

So we went into the D:OS 2 looking for a bit more challenging experience. What we got was something completely different.

20+ hours into the game an we just sneaked our way into the fort where we have to save the leader of the Seekers. It turns out he saved us while my gf was kiting the enemy and allowing him to deal with the bunch of them. This is the part where we realized that we either:

1. have no idea what we're doing;
   
2. are severely underpowered;
   
3. completely messed up our character creation;
   
4. encountered some bugs.

Now the thing is, we've already played D:OS as I've mentioned and the games are pretty much identical and the only notable change is the armor system so the #1 is kind of out of the question.
As for the #2, our enemies are of the same level so that can't really be it either (can it?).
#3 is where my money's at but then again, we both picked premade classes and proceeded with increasing the main attributes (END / STR for my tanky inquisitor and FIN for her archer) and are rolling with default Fane and Lohse.
#4 is highly unlikely and I don't even consider it possible given the fact that the game is very polished but one can never be 100% certain.

So, the problem is that we can't do♥♥♥♥♥♥in combat. Even if we manage to win, it's always a Pyrrhic victory where we barely make it out, spend a potion or two and a couple of scrolls to resurrect the fallen party members afterwards which became rather hard to do if not impossible as we are out of gold at this point as well as out of goods to sell (and my character even has 1 skill @ bartering).
It seems rather unfair to be so hard and tedious to bring the opponents armor down when they can pretty much take all of our own (both physical and magical) in just 1 hit/shot with the exception of our tank who takes 2 to 3 hits, lol :cgrazz:

So what I'm asking is:
Is this normal experience for tactician mode? Does it get a wee-bit easier later on once we remove our collars? Are we missing some crucial gamplay element and should we focus more heavily on defense and armor of our own characters?
I've read some people saying that quicksaving and encounter replaying is inevitable and that it will be a big part of tactician mode which is not really something I would like it to be. I want it to be more dynamic, more situational where we can make a single mistake which consequences
we will get to feel but not get completely annihilated because we accidentally misclicked.

Also, is there challenge to be had on normal mode or is it just a walk in the park that makes the game rather easy and accessible to anyone because that's not what we want either?
Last but not least, should we use any mods to make the game challenging but fair at the same time?

Thanks in advance!

It's been a while since I've played D:OS so I can't recall if it was quite the same challenge level as D:OS2, but I recommend, in no way, play Tactician on this one.

This game is absurdly hard, and often in the completely wrong way. The stat scaling feels way off. It's clearly exponential. You have no choice but to constantly grind for gear. In that regard, it's about the worst gear grind game ever.

The AI cheats clearly. They do more damage, can move more, and act more often than you can. Cooldowns work differently for them too.

The game is excellent, don't get me wrong, but it seems they're moving even closer to the WoW gear grind playbook, and I personally find that to be a negative. Many people are complaining about it here. The points are valid.

You should play normal IMO. You're going to find that even 1 level difference will mean the difference between a fairly even fight and total domination.

In short, the balance/scaling is just not good. You're punishing yourself by playing tactician. I can't imagine how crazy that would make me. It already feels like a loot treadmill.

Expect your gear to ALWAYS be obsolete. Steal everything, buy every piece you can. Make sure your average gear level is within 2 of the enemies you're facing. That's about it. You can overcome some deficiencies by being cheap and gamey about it, but that's not much fun.

Also, no, it doesn't get easier, atleast not in normal. It gets harder in fact. Level scaling is clearly not linear. The difference, level to level, gets more severe later. At 15 a level 16 enemy is way stronger than you whereas as level 5 a level 6 enemy is not much stronger than you.

I'm not trying to knock the game. I'm having a blast playing it, but like any game, it's not perfect and won't suit everyone's tastes in every way. Also, most fights are NOT that bad, but a good chunk are that way.

This is my 2c.

[geøstigma]

Just wanted to say that we've crafted new weapons and upgraded the gear and that it's so much better now. We were able to win the battle (that we previously had to rely on friendly NPC to win it for us) in a single go! And while the game is still tough as nails, it feels much more fair now.

The tips that you guys shared really did it and the video that Gregorovitch posted helped me understand the importance of CC and positioning in this game a lot better than I thought I did.

Thanks everyone, I'm glad to be a part of such a friendly community