Ran into first "brick wall" hehe.

[otakon17]

Got killed by a Stone Golem "Powerful Monster" in the Dunisian Badlands that whupped my party at level 12. Kinda surprised by that, considering I've been able to handle everything else in the area without wiping. Was only doing 1 damage to it as well, even with using Scrap Mettle with the only decent damage coming from critical hits.

[Schnittertm]

The game informs you of formidable monsters and you can only engage those if you attack them first and yes, in the early game, they can be very formidable and deadly. If you don't know their attack patterns yet they can be quite a challenge.

Later in the game, once you overlevel and overgear them they become increasingly easy. The only real challenge then will be some late game monsters (Roseguardin, Atlas and Crimson Killing Machine come to mind), especially in their powered up Wanted! versions. Some of those can one hit kill even level 99 characters if you are not careful.

[otakon17]

Originally posted by Schnittertm:

The game informs you of formidable monsters and you can only engage those if you attack them first and yes, in the early game, they can be very formidable and deadly. If you don't know their attack patterns yet they can be quite a challenge.

Later in the game, once you overlevel and overgear them they become increasingly easy. The only real challenge then will be some late game monsters (Roseguardin, Atlas and Crimson Killing Machine come to mind), especially in their powered up Wanted! versions. Some of those can one hit kill even level 99 characters if you are not careful.

Yeah but the first one I encountered wasn't THAT massively stronger than the other enemies in the area(Greene Pastures, Killing Machine).

This thing was only taking 1 damage and nearly killing my characters with 1 attack while the damage of the first "Formidable" was a lot higher than the ones in the first area, wasn't a 2 shot KO.

[Schnittertm]

The Hunter Mech in Greena Pastures is quite a weak enemy. You'll soon meet some more of them and once you know Zap you can stun them and take them out with almost no effort at all.

The Stone Golem is an enemy you meet later in the game again when most of your characters are around level 30-35, which is when you should have the proper equipment and skills to deal with it more easily. Stone Golem, just as any other Golem type enemy, also have quite high resilience stats, meaning they take less damage from attacks. This means that when you're at level 12 you'll only do 1 damage unless you get a critical strike which circumvents resilience entirely and does full damage.

The formidable monsters are just monsters that you'll later meet as standard monsters in dungeons/battle zones or even in some Wild Zones. They all also have wanted versions of them later in the game in those zones which are, as mentioned before, a higher challenge.

You might have similar problems with the Boss Troll and the Antiquitree that you'll soon meet when you follow the story further. If you see them be either prepared to die often or come back later, as they are also more for level 30 and up. You can beat them earlier, but that means that you have to dodge most of their attacks and know their attack tells. If you don't = one hit KO on some of their attacks.

[Lord Misfit]

I also had that situation with the Stone Golem, but I managed to survive the first encounter because I had Maribel in the party with Frizz-type spells. Magic attacks ignore Resilience and are generally much more useful against it, also since you can keep your distance while your melee-oriented AI tries to keep the Golem distracted. :V

This doesn't always mean it's the best strategy for the really powerful monsters though. You'll have to experiment with future monsters like this [aka the Troll in the forest, etc]

[otakon17]

Originally posted by Lord Misfit:

I also had that situation with the Stone Golem, but I managed to survive the first encounter because I had Maribel in the party with Frizz-type spells. Magic attacks ignore Resilience and are generally much more useful against it, also since you can keep your distance while your melee-oriented AI tries to keep the Golem distracted. :V

This doesn't always mean it's the best strategy for the really powerful monsters though. You'll have to experiment with future monsters like this [aka the Troll in the forest, etc]

Well I do have Maribel now, I could try back and destroy the thing. I managed to beat the Dunisian Pyramid level and got the next round of equipment upgrades.