Best difficulty to play on?

[Mom's Spaghetti]

What's the best option for balance

[josh]

If you're familiar with CRPGs, or like some challenge when you play games, classic is the way to go. Tactician is generally for people who've already played the game. Choose a lower difficulty if you find classic too hard.

I will say that if you start on classic, give it about 10 hours or so. The beginning seems pretty rough if you have no idea what to expect. But eventually you pick up on how the game plays and everything smooths out.

[Chaoslink]

Hard to say. I personally found Tactician to be too easy. My first run I quit to bump up to Tactician and it felt like a "normal" setting then. Now its about halfway between an Easy and Normal difficulty setting.

That said, they added an easier difficulty level after launch because players found the "easy" setting too hard.

I'd probably recommend Classic for starters. At any time you can jump on the forum here and get help. Spoiler free.

If you're more experienced with turn based combat, you might opt into Tactician. Once you get the basics down, you'll probably find it to be the right balance for you. If not, the forum here can help you adjust to the difficulty. Its up to you though. Tactician could be too much your first time in and the game allows changing around the difficulty for everything but Tactician.

[RikuDEagle]

As said before, varies by player. I played on all of them but I still feel like classic is the more alright. It's far from fair, but you don't need to deal with extra random buffs. Learn the game mechanics first and if you feel like it's too easy, just try out the next one.

Story = For people that never played this kind of game before, extremely easy.
Explorer = Easy mode, you still have a lot of buffs and enemies have debuffs.
Classic = No modifiers.
Tactician = Hard mode, enemies are stronger and smarter, some cheat more than normal.
Honour = Same as Tactician, but you have 1 save, it auto-saves when someone dies or a fight starts, and if everyone dies, your save is erased.

Welp, good luck and have fun.

[Panda]

Best option is to play tactician with a balanced mode - vanilla kinda boring after certain levels.

[Etxxu]

Originally posted by josh:

If you're familiar with CRPGs, or like some challenge when you play games, classic is the way to go. Tactician is generally for people who've already played the game. Choose a lower difficulty if you find classic too hard.

I will say that if you start on classic, give it about 10 hours or so. The beginning seems pretty rough if you have no idea what to expect. But eventually you pick up on how the game plays and everything smooths out.

I hear a lot of Tactician, but I can only see Story Mode, Explorer Mode and Classic Mode... how do I enable Tactician Mode?

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by Etxxu:

Originally posted by josh:

If you're familiar with CRPGs, or like some challenge when you play games, classic is the way to go. Tactician is generally for people who've already played the game. Choose a lower difficulty if you find classic too hard.

I will say that if you start on classic, give it about 10 hours or so. The beginning seems pretty rough if you have no idea what to expect. But eventually you pick up on how the game plays and everything smooths out.

I hear a lot of Tactician, but I can only see Story Mode, Explorer Mode and Classic Mode... how do I enable Tactician Mode?

There's no reason it wouldn't be "enabled", can you share a screenshot?

[vinniedamac]

I just beat Baldur's Gate 3 on Balanced and it felt way too easy so I decided to give Tactician a shot on DOS2.. It's been a good challenge so far, I managed to beat Act 1 without using guides tho I did watch some YouTube videos to learn the mechanics. The difficulty did jump substantially from Act 1 to Act 2 and I'm starting to have to use guides more often to avoid getting stuck.

I'm actually a little nervous about hitting a point in the game where it'ill be too difficult and I get stuck because, apparently, you can't drop the difficult down in the middle of a run like you can in Baldur's Gate 3. But I was purposely seeking a challenge so I'm fine with that, it forces you to be more resourceful and rely on all the in-game mechanics. IE on Story/Explorer, you probably won't need to steal at all whereas in Tactician, you might need to steal to increase your power to overcome a difficult fight.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by vinniedamac:

I'm actually a little nervous about hitting a point in the game where it'ill be too difficult and I get stuck because, apparently, you can't drop the difficult down in the middle of a run like you can in Baldur's Gate 3.

If you do hit that point, feel free to ask the community here for help. We're here regularly and can get you on track in ways specifically adapted to your situation as needed.

[Volatility]

Originally posted by josh:

I will say that if you start on classic, give it about 10 hours or so. The beginning seems pretty rough if you have no idea what to expect. But eventually you pick up on how the game plays and everything smooths out.

I just started this game, on Classic difficulty, and the first few levels were tough. I'm learning the mechanics and my gear sucked, but level 2 and 3 were a lot of re-loads after getting waxed. The early fights seem to be against 4-5 enemies all with more Health and armor.

I'm liking it a lot though as I get more used to the mechanics.

I actually bought this game a year or so ago, played it for 30 minutes and dropped it. Didn't make it off the ship. But having found out it was made by the same company that did BG3, I gave it another try and I'm glad I did.

[Molotov Milkshake]

Originally posted by Mom's Spaghetti:

What's the best option for balance

Whichever one you can actually manage. It's easy to figure out. I've had to adjust the difficulty twice during a single playthrough. Usually I play classic, but have dropped it to Explorer during moments where I'm truly unable to progress the game.

[Molotov Milkshake]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by vinniedamac:

I'm actually a little nervous about hitting a point in the game where it'ill be too difficult and I get stuck because, apparently, you can't drop the difficult down in the middle of a run like you can in Baldur's Gate 3.

If you do hit that point, feel free to ask the community here for help. We're here regularly and can get you on track in ways specifically adapted to your situation as needed. :fhappy::dwarven:

There's absolutely nothing wrong with just temporarily turning the difficulty down if someone gets stuck. It's a valid way to move ahead. Given how unbalanced and brutal the difficulty is in this game, it's fair enough to turn it down at times. For example I went into Act 4 at level 17 and it was impossible to win any of the battles because of it. Turned it to Explorer mode and it was EASY. Immediately hit level 18 and switched back to Classic difficulty and doing just fine again. If you get hung up on difficulty elitism, you are gonna have a bad time with this game because of how brutal it is.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Molotov Milkshake:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

If you do hit that point, feel free to ask the community here for help. We're here regularly and can get you on track in ways specifically adapted to your situation as needed.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with just temporarily turning the difficulty down if someone gets stuck. It's a valid way to move ahead. Given how unbalanced and brutal the difficulty is in this game, it's fair enough to turn it down at times. For example I went into Act 4 at level 17 and it was impossible to win any of the battles because of it. Turned it to Explorer mode and it was EASY. Immediately hit level 18 and switched back to Classic difficulty and doing just fine again. If you get hung up on difficulty elitism, you are gonna have a bad time with this game because of how brutal it is.

Two things. One, you cannot do this if you picked Tactician. The game won’t let you change the difficulty.

Two, if you’re struggling in the last act, your character builds aren’t up to snuff. You’re at your most powerful in the last act. Level stops mattering nearly as much if your builds are capable. Any veteran player can tell you that.